Colorado House 2026 Legislative Day 066

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Representatives Bacon.

Oh.

Here.

Bottoms.

Bradfield.

Brooks.

Representative Brown.

Camacho.

Clifford. Representative Clifford is excused. Reptigraph is excused.

Excused.

English. Representative English. Excused.

Farray.

Froelich. Representative Froelich. Excuse.

Rep. Garcia.

Gilchrist. Okay.

Gonzalez.

Hartsook.

Johnson.

Kelty.

Lindsey.

Representative Luck. Excused.

Mabry. Representative Mabry. Excuse.

Representative Marshall. Excuse.

Morrow.

Yeah, oh yeah. Wynn Pascal Phillips Richardson Ricks Representative Ricks Excuse Rootnell rep Rootnell excused

Sirota.

Smith.

Stuart K.

Story.

Taggart.

Valdez A. Rep. Valdez is excused.

Weinberg. Representative Weinberg is excused.

Winter.

Woog.

And Madam Speaker. With 58 members present and been excused, we have a quorum.

You have heard the motion that the journal be approved as corrected by the chief clerk. All those in favor say aye.

All those opposed, no.

The motion is adopted. Members, announcements and introductions. Any announcements or introductions?

Okay.

Good morning.

Representative Zokai.

Representative Goldstein.

Thank you, representatives. Further announcements or introductions? Representative Stewart. Representative Sukla. Representative Stewart.

Representative Sucla.

Representative Woodrow.

Representative Leader.

Representative Joseph.

Thank you, members, and thank you for being here. Further announcements and introductions? Seeing none, Majority Leader Duran.

Seeing no objection, we will proceed out of order for consideration of resolutions. Mr. Sheba, please read the title of House Joint Resolution 261017.

Representative Stewart.

Mr. Schiebel.

Representative Stewart.

Madam Speaker. Thank you, Mr. Speaker Pro Tem. Members, I had the opportunity to visit the southwestern corner of our state and firsthand see the challenges that La Plata County and our tribal nations have faced with the Animus La Plata project, the project that is called forward in this resolution. I was astounded by the lack of federal support for this critically important water project. The U people were the original inhabitants of this land and this state, and it is deeply important that we work in partnership with the tribes to support their needs and development. This resolution highlights those needs and calls upon all of us to support the efforts of reaching out to our federal partners and ensuring that the tribal nations are heard when it's come to the critical needs of this particular project. I often talk about water being the lifeblood, the spirit of the West. It is for all of us, for those of us in the state of Colorado, for our tribal nations, and we must share one voice in asking for this critical support at this time. Representative Stewart.

You just move the amendment, Representative.

That is a proper motion. One moment, we'll get that displayed. Rep. Stewart, the amendment is before us, if you'd like to tell us about it.

Representative Sucla.

Seeing no further discussion, the question before us is the adoption of Amendment L4 to House Joint Resolution 1017. Mr. Schiebel, please open the machine.

Oh, thank you, Rep. Hamrick. Rep. Hamrick votes yes. Representative Ricks, how do you vote? Yes Representative Rutanel votes yes Representative Ricks how do you vote Representative Ricks if you can hear us we just need you to unmute and voice your vote Representative Ricks is excused. Yes. Do you hear anything? there. Representative Ricks, could you vote one more time for us? Yes. Representative Ricks votes yes. Please close the machine. With 60 ayes, 0, no, and 5 excused, the amendment is adopted. We are back to the resolution.

That is a proper motion. Members, the question before us is the adoption of House Joint Resolution 261017 as amended. Mr. Schiebel, please open the machine.

Representative Hamrick, how do you vote? I vote yes. Representative Hamrick votes yes. Representative Rutanel, how do you vote? Yes. Representative Rutanel votes yes. Representative Ricks, how do you vote? Yes. Representative Ricks votes yes. Or is there anything? Please close the machine. With 60 aye, 0 no, and 5 excused, the resolution is adopted. Co-sponsors. Representative Hamrick, co-sponsors. Representative Rutanel, co-sponsors. Representative Rick's co-sponsors. Please close the machine. Mr. Schiebel, please read the title to Senate Joint Resolution 26017.

Representative Wilford. Good morning. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move Senate Joint Resolution 17 and ask that it be read at length.

Whereas Section 49 of Article 5 of the Constitution of the State of Colorado provides for a majority of the members serving in each House of the General Assembly to appoint a State Auditor to serve for the term of five years. and whereas among the functions of the legislative audit committee is to examine persons applying for the position of state auditor as to qualifications and ability but without regard to political affiliation and after consultation with the executive committee of the legislative council to place the name of the most qualified candidate for the position in nomination before the general assembly and whereas in 2021 the general assembly approved the appointment of carrie l hunter as state auditor for a five-year term commencing july 1st 2021 and ending july 30th 2026 and whereas Since becoming state auditor, Ms. Hunter has demonstrated outstanding leadership of her office as evidenced by her building and maintaining a team of highly experienced and dedicated individuals her competent professional and nonpartisan oversight of complex audits and evaluations touching on many aspects of state government her commitment to the highest ethical standards and her ability to establish and maintain quality relationships with members of the General Assembly and other elected officials, as well as with officials within state agencies and business and community leaders. And whereas Ms. Hunter, a Betcher Foundation Scholar alumni, has more than 31 years of governmental auditing experience, has dedicated her career to promoting government effectiveness, efficiency, and accountability across Colorado state government, and is highly regarded as a subject matter expert in auditing and government operations. And whereas in 2023, 2024, and 2025, Ms. Hunter and her staff received multiple national impact awards from the National Conference of State Legislatures in recognition of her high-quality work, and in 2021, Ms. Hunter was the recipient of the Pro-15 Northeast Colorado's 2021 Alumni of the Plains Award for Professional Excellence. And whereas on February 25, 2026, in accordance with Section 23101-3A Colorado Revised Statutes, the Legislative Audit Committee voted unanimously to submit the name of Carrie L. Hunter to the second regular session of the 75th General Assembly for the position of state auditor. And whereas in accordance with statutory requirements, the Legislative Audit Committee consulted with the Executive Committee of the Legislative Council with respect to the reappointment of Ms. Hunter, and the Executive Committee concurs with the reappointment. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Senate of the 75th General Assembly of the State of Colorado, the House concurring herein, that Carrie L. Hunter be reappointed by this General Assembly to the position of State Auditor for a term commencing July 1, 2026 and ending June 30, 2031, and until a qualified successor is appointed.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise today, along with current and former members of the legislative audit, in strong support of the reappointment of Carrie Hunter as Colorado's state auditor. Over the last year, I've had the honor of serving on the legislative audit committee, and through that work, I've had the opportunity to interact regularly with Auditor Hunter and her team, and I can say without hesitation that the Office of the State Auditor operates with the highest level of professionalism, integrity, and excellence. The Legislative Audit Committee is a unique place in this building. It's evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans from both chambers and is one of the places where we are often able to set aside partisanship and focus on doing the work of the state. Auditor Hunter makes that work possible. Her leadership ensures that our audits are thorough, credible, and trusted by members on both sides of the aisle. With more than three decades of auditing experience and a deep commitment to government accountability, she has built and maintained an exceptional team and, as you heard, has earned national recognition for the quality of their work. All 35 members of the Senate got something right, believe it or not, when they unanimously adopted this resolution, and I'm hoping that all 65 of us can also unanimously do the same. I'm proud today to support the reappointment of Auditor Hunter and urge a yes vote.

Thank you, Speaker. Honestly, between the resolution itself and my good colleagues' comments, there's not a whole lot to add. I just want to point out that you have here with the four of us the current legislative audit committee out of the house and then you know you've got the the other chamber over there that contributes a little bit as well but it is truly a very unique as my colleague said a unique committee where it bicameral it bipartisan and I tell you that it was a slam dunk on the reappointment of Carrie Hunter. There was no dissension, you know, hardly any discussion with it aside from just a lot of support for somebody who works very hard in a department. Oh my goodness, guys, this department that she runs is just, it's top-notch. They do a really, really good job. It's an honor to sit on that committee, and I absolutely support bringing Auditor Hunter back for another five years.

Representative Hamrick, how do you vote?

Representative Brooks Speaker, thank you We asked for a little bit of a pause here because it might have been awkward to do this before the vote, even though there was never really any concern about the vote itself.

Auditor Hunter is with us today, and I would invite you all to stand and give her a well-deserved applause.

Thank you.

Madam Speaker, I move the following bills be made special orders on March 20th, 2026 at 9.37 a.m. Senate Bill 39, House Bill 1311, House Bill 1184, House Bill 1305, House Bill 1234, Senate Bill 50, Senate Bill 84, House Bill 1186, House Bill 1181, and Senate Bill 21.

Representative Zocay You have heard the motion members seeing no objection Representative Zocay will take the chair

Senate Bill 39 by Senators Snyder and Pelton Biel, so representatives of Bayesnecker and Teigert, concerning the administration by the Fire and Police Pension Association of Disability and Survivor Benefits.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's an honor to serve with you. And an honor to serve with you, sir.

To the Committee report.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In the Finance Committee, we simply made a technical cleanup due to a statutory reference that needed to be fixed. We ask for a yes vote.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move L3 to Senate Bill 39 and ask that it be properly displayed.

another um technical cleanup um clarifying the word receives and striking shall we ask for a yes vote is there any further discussion on l003 seeing none the question before us is its passage

Yes. Representative Brooks. Chair, thank you. Look, I just feel a little bit of a compulsion to come up because of me sitting on the committee. Very, very easy bill. It came out unanimously. Support the bill all the way. Just wanted to come up in case there's any questions from any of my membership about the bill itself. So just wanted to say support.

House Bill 1311 by Representatives Duran and Carter also Senators Bright and Snyder concerning the use of a bond in lieu of retainage in construction contracts Madam Majority Leader

I move House Bill 1311 To the bill

Thank you, Madam Chair I'd like to move Amendment L-002 and ask that it be properly displayed

Thank you, Madam Chair. This amendment provides clarity on what would be a public project versus a private project, and I ask for a yes vote.

Representative Carter. Thank you, Madam Chair. This bill is specifically, we spoke about it during committee. We spoke about it during committee. This bill allows small contractors, mostly contractors of color, women contractors, but those smaller contractors, allowing them to enter the market through using, instead of them having to come up with that 15 or that 5% of the retainage, They can actually go through a surety which allows one an extra third party to have oversight in helping the property to actually get built And two it allows these smaller contractors to enter the market and I urge and I vote Is there any further discussion on House Bill 1311?

House Bill 1184 by Representatives Lukens and Morrow, also Senator Cutter. concerning the continuation of the Colorado Forest Health Council and in connection therewith, implementing the recommendation of the Department of Regulatory Agencies and the Department's 2025 Sunset Report.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move House Bill 1184, the Agriculture Report, and the Appropriations Report.

Representative Lukens. Thank you, Madam Chair. In the Appropriations Committee, we decrease the appropriation and we ask for your yes vote.

Aye.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In the Agriculture Committee, we added a sunset date to the sunset. Instead of having it be indefinite, we ask for your yes vote on the Agriculture Committee report.

Aye.

to the bill representative morrow thank you madam chair the colorado forest health council offers a forum for stakeholders who manage or depend on forests to advise colorado's elected leaders about these issues opportunities and threats facing our state's forest and we ask for an aye vote is there any further discussion on house bill 1184 seeing none the question before us is the passage of house bill 1184 all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed no the

House Bill 1305 by Representative Lukens, also Senator Roberts, concerning enhancing access to inpatient behavioral health by aligning state and federal statutes.

To the bill.

Representative Brooks.

Thank you, Representative Brooks. Is there any further discussion on House Bill 1305? Seeing none, the question before us is the passage of House Bill 1305. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed, no. The ayes have it. House Bill 1305 passes. Mr. Schiebel, please read the title of House Bill 1234.

Representative Ryden. I move House Bill 1234 and the Judiciary Report to the Committee Report.

We passed unanimously out a committee. The focus of this bill really is making sure people, if you're named as a victim in your abuse and neglect record, that you have access to that.

Aye.

I move amendment L002 to House Bill 1234 and ask that it be properly displayed.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This amendment is one that we worked on with the DAs. We just wanted to make sure that unless the courts explicitly grant access to the child abuse records or negligent reports, that it concerns how they're released and it's subjected to the constitutional limitations that we currently have in law.

Aye.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's probably good to at least briefly lay on the record what the bill does. So a major problem that has occurred within Colorado is an individual who was abused as a child, and there's a child abuse report or neglect report, they're unable to gain access to that or grant access with a third party like an attorney. So imagine a situation where an individual is in a detention facility or in prison, and they're needing access to their own records for being able to make a defense or a case. The other problem is after someone turns 18, the ability to access those records are very problematic. We're streamlining it so that the individual who was the abused individual can gain easy access along with someone that they designate. And then while we were in this area of statute, we discovered that we had some gaps that we just needed to fill because we had passed some major legislation in the state. in the last several years and accidentally had deleted some statutory references, so we're adding those back in.

Aye.

Senate Bill 50 by Senators Marchman and Bright, also Representative Joseph and Soper, concerning certain disclosures of policies that a child care center must provide to the caregivers of children being served at the child care center. Representative Sofer.

To the bill.

Okay. Representative Joseph.

Representative Brooks with some new fresh ideas for us, I assume.

Representative Brooks.

Is there any further discussion on Senate Bill 50, Representative Kelty?

Mr. Schiebel, please read the title to Senate Bill 84.

Representative Wilford. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move Senate Bill 84.

Senate Bill 84 comes directly from the Legislative Audit Committee and passed the Senate unanimously. It is a straightforward, good government bill that helps ensure that the state auditor's staff can do their job effectively when investigating tips submitted through the state's fraud hotline. When state agencies cooperate with an investigation, they may need to share sensitive legal information, things like attorney-client communications or internal deliberations. This bill simply clarifies that providing that information to the state auditor does not waive those legal privileges. Without this clarification, agencies may hesitate to fully cooperate out of concern that sharing information with the auditor could expose them in other legal contexts. This bill removes that uncertainty and ensures that the Legislative Audit Committee and the Office of the State Auditor have access to the information they need to investigate potential fraud, waste, and abuse. This bill is about transparency, accountability, and making sure our oversight tools work as intended, and I respectfully ask for your yes vote on Senate Bill 84.

Sure, thank you. Not to spoil the bipartisan moment that we shared here not too long ago, but I do want to just clear up some confusion for members because I've had this question several times. I just had this question not more than a minute ago or so. I do understand that my name is on this bill. It was on at origination, as my colleague described, this is a legislative audit bill, one that is more assigned rather than anything because through the legislative audit committee process, you're not actually sitting through testimony. You're not sitting through what we understand as a traditional committee process. So I was on the bill. As I learned more about it, I started to have concerns about this particular piece of legislation. I have been removed from the bill at the permission slip that I received from the speaker. Just wanted to clarify that for any of the confusion with my name still remaining on it, but I am removing myself from this particular policy. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So I move amendment L002 and ask that it be displayed.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In committee, a gentleman came and gave testimony. He further submitted other information to members of the committee, and part of that informational packet was this amendment language that he has asked us to run in order to close the potential for harm that he sees. I'm going to read to you his testimony. There are some others who are going to get up and talk to you about other things that he has said but this way you have some understanding hopefully of what the issue is

Good afternoon, committee members.

Members, if you can please take your conversations to the side. We are having a hard time hearing our speaker. Thank you, Madam Chair.

That was his testimony in committee. As I mentioned, he also sent this amendment language in order to tighten up this bill in hopes of solving the problems that he sees in this space. I encourage further conversation with respect to this amendment and will likely be up soon.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I stand in strong support of this amendment. We had a gentleman who was very deeply involved, and thankfully he sent a all his points and he sent us all his testimony and he came to the Capitol and he provided testimony from up north and this is a real problem and if this goes through without this amendment this is going to be a significant problem to the whistleblowers of Colorado. And so I'm going to read through so my caucus understands what this bill will do and why this amendment is so very important. This bill is presented as a necessary change to encourage greater access to governmental information as part of a fraud hotline investigations. If the reservation of claims of privilege and confidentiality is in fact necessary, it can be accomplished through a much simpler amendment of the fraud hotline statute. Instead, the purposes of this bill are far more nefarious and will only legitimize how the justices of Colorado Supreme Court in concert with Attorney General Phil Weiser has used broad claims of governmental privilege and confidentiality to prevent the disclosure of material information and evidence as part of the OSA's 2019-2022 investigation of the sole source 2.6 to 2.75 million quid pro quo contract for silence with former Colorado State Court Administrator's Office Chief of Staff Mindy Macias. Boy, that was a lot of words. Sorry. These claims of privilege and confidentiality were used to delay reporting to law enforcement and to control the substance of the OSA's final February 4, 2022 fraud hotline report through redactions or otherwise. Despite the OSA finding examples of the occupational fraud and referring the matter to the second judicial district attorney's office, district attorney's office the delays in censorship by those subject to investigation caused the statute of limitations to expire and that's where the problem lies the control, because all of these things were redacted and then by the time he got the information the limitations had expired the control exerted by the justices and the AG's office over the Messiah's investigation was a textbook example of obstruction of justice in its existing form this bill will only allow those who are being investigated to control the evidence and the OSA's ability to exercise independent and impartial judgment. This bill will only further silence whistleblowers and victims, who we certainly sit here and say that we try to support, while maintaining the problematic enforced culture of silence that exists within the Colorado state government. There is a pending federal lawsuit that addresses the enforced culture of silence within the Colorado judiciary and Colorado state government. Gregory v. Colorado Judicial Discipline Rulemaking, Calm et al. As named defendants in that case, Governor Jared Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser, and the justices failed to respond in a timely manner and are apparently avoiding their obligations to address the merits of this case. A default is entered against all the defendants. Until and unless the default is set aside, liability is proven and the allegations in the complaint are deemed admitted. One of the allegations raised in Gregory is that our governor abused his appointment powers to stack the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline and other judicial oversight authorities to facilitate retaliation against the plaintiff, Christopher Gregory, who had previously served as a member of Vice Chair, Chair, and Executive Director of the CCJD. Governor Polis' retaliatory actions against Mr. Gregory satisfied the elements of the crime of the attempt to influence a public server. Incidentally this is the same crime that former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and her former Senator here were both convicted of while disproportionate sentencing outcomes Tina Peters is serving a nine prison term while the previous senator received probation notwithstanding her use of public funds to intimidate her staff and the fabrication of evidence. Governor Polis' recent overtures of being willing to commute Tina Peters' remaining prison sentence are nothing more than a blatant effort to ingratiate himself with the Trump administration. So that's why this amendment is so important to protect the whistleblowers and the victims of our state. It's a fair amendment, and we ask for an aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. I want to start off by saying I don't think the sponsors of the bill first realize the full impact of this, but I don't think they have nefarious intentions. I think the result becomes that. So after we heard some of this testimony, I've been getting emails for quite a few months from some of the people that testified in committee about this. So after committee, I went and talked to some of the people that were involved, and specifically Mr. Gregory, that had made some of these complaints. And his complaint basically was this. If this bill gets passed, it actually hinders we, the people, from having legitimate investigation and recourse into corruption in judicial settings.

Yes.

So after the committee, I went and investigated on my own some of this, some of the claims that were brought, and then actually dug deeper into this, that this has already been turned over to the DOJ, that there are formal complaints about this on many, many different levels, And as I began to talk to some different lawyers that were involved, I talked to some of the complainants and some of the pieces of the case of the corruption with our judicial system. This was said to me by a few different people, and this is why this amendment is necessary. Actually, what I would like to see is the entire bill go away because it's going to cause major, major problems. but this is what I was told by a handful of people that are involved directly with this case that has been presented to the DOJ, that this is probably going to go down as the biggest corruption case in the history of Colorado as this is all being uncovered. And the DOJ is actively involved right now with this. I saw many of the pieces of evidence, and I walked through this for quite a while directly dealing with this. Now, as I started off, I'm not trying to put this on the back of the bill sponsors. I don't think they know what's going on here. I don't think they know the bigger picture. But it wouldn't take long to be brought up to speed on the bigger picture. And so I do think this amendment is necessary. But I think in the bigger picture, let's take this bill off the table and let's go back to the investigation. Let go back to the DOJ Let go back to some of the claims of the corruption case that involved with this And let not put this bill as a messy little tiny little messy piece right in the middle of this very big investigation And guys we not talking a little bit of corruption and fraud We're talking to the tune of $33 to $35 billion worth of corruption and fraud. This bill doesn't understand the bigger picture and when you're when you're stepping into this and i'm just saying very politely to our to our bill sponsors i think you need to back off on this pull this bill away and let this let this flower out before this bill this little bill gets in and causes some problems that will have to be adjudicated later as part of a major major uh corruption case involving our justice in the state of Colorado, including the Supreme Court in the state of Colorado. And all of this can be found and talked to if you want to investigate this with the lawyers, with the DOJ, and with a gentleman to start the conversation named Christopher Gregory. This is where we need to start with this. So I just suggest yes on the amendment, pull the bill. Just pull the bill. This is pretty important right at this moment.

Rep Wilford. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you to my colleagues for engaging in this robust conversation. I do really appreciate it. The claims that were made by the gentlemen in committee have been investigated by at least five different bodies who are independent of the judiciary. Nothing in this bill will negatively impact whistleblowers. investigations can still happen this bill simply ensures that the audit or the audit I'm sorry state auditor is able to fully complete investigations and people will talk to her and her team because they're not going to get in trouble for talking to her like we need to be able to have these conversations to get to the bottom of what is happening and this bill will allow us to do that So I would ask for a no vote on this amendment.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know that another member is asking for an amendment, And so I'm going to just actually, would it be possible, Madam Chair, just to go into a brief recess or would you rather me just talk?

All right. Wonderful. Then I guess I will just talk to this bill. Some other information that actually was brought forward by that same gentleman in committee includes this case. Do I need some water? so I should have been speaking on this with respect to that amendment but I think it's important maybe to read into the record this article about this federal investigation into Colorado it says on Monday April 28 2025 Colorado Politics reported that the Colorado Commission tasked with disciplining state judges has dismissed a significant anonymous complaint alleging a long conspiracy to conceal judicial misconduct This decision emerged during a state Senate Judiciary Committee meeting hearing focused on confirming the reappointments of Mindy Souter and Jim Carpenter, who serve as chair and vice chair of the Commission on Judicial Discipline. The complaint, which spans 330 pages and includes over 3,100 pages of supporting documents, was filed anonymously in October. It claims a comprehensive conspiracy involving various judicial figures aimed at hiding years of alleged misconduct, misconduct, including lying, retaliation, and improper use of public funds. Former Commission on Judicial Discipline Director Christopher Gregory, who had previously urged federal investigators to look into the matter, testified at the hearing, highlighting the need for further inquiry into the allegations. Senators were taken aback when it was revealed that the commission had dismissed the complaint without publicly addressing its contents. Senate committee members, including Senator Lisa Frizzell and Senator John Carson, expressed a desire to delay the vote on the reappointments to gather more information on the serious issues raised by Gregory's testimony. Gregory warned the committee about a persistent scheme of public corruption that he claims has been ongoing since the scandal first came to light in 2019. He alleged that former Chief Justice Nathan Ben Coates was involved in approving a controversial contract aimed at maintaining silence regarding judicial misconduct. This contract, which Gregory referred to as a contract for silence, has been a focal point of the scandal since early 2021. During the hearing, Gregory emphasized the importance of a federal investigation, stating that the issues at hand are significant and warrant a thorough review. He articulated concerns about conflicts of interest within the state's judicial system, particularly noting that a senior member of the Department of Justice's Denver office is married to Colorado Supreme Court Justice Melissa Hart. Despite his efforts to engage with federal authorities, Gregory claimed he faced obstacles and was ultimately ignored by the Denver DOJ office. Senator Julie Gonzalez, a Democrat from Denver, mentioned that she had read the entire complaint and found it deeply troubling. She described it as holding a mirror to the institution, reflecting missed opportunities for accountability. The complaint suggests that high-ranking officials, including members of the Colorado Supreme Court and the Attorney General's Office, have been involved in actions to obstruct investigations and conceal evidence of misconduct. The Commission Director, Anne Mangiardi, stated that the anonymous nature of the complaint limited the Commission's ability to provide updates or comments on its status. Despite the serious allegations, Souter and Carpenter were reappointed by Governor Jared Polis, which has raised concerns among some legislators. Gregory, who was dismissed from his position in January of 2024, claimed his termination was in retaliation for his commitment to integrity and accountability within the judicial system. He argued that the Commission's previous handling of has been inadequate, emphasizing the need for reforms that go beyond the measures already implemented through Proposition H, which aim to change the disciplinary framework for judges in Colorado. The controversy has intensified calls for oversight and reform within the Colorado Judicial Department. Gregory pointed out that the Commission has historically handled only a few complaints each year, but that number has surged since the media began reporting on the ongoing scandal. I will leave it there.

That is a proper motion would you like us to display it?

and it is displayed. Please proceed.

Representative Wilford. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Members, I do believe that this is a good way to close that loophole, as you just heard, and ask for an aye vote.

Mr. Schiebel, please read the title to House Bill 1186. House Bill 1186 by Representatives Mabry and Soper, also Senators Ball and Weissman, concerning the continuation of the regulation of bail bonding agents regulated by Article 23 of Title 10, Colorado Revised Statutes by the Division of Insurance and Connection therewith, implementing the 2025 sunset report by the Department of Regulatory Agencies. Representative Mabry. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move House Bill 1186 and the committee report.

Members in the committee, we changed the timeline on this sunset. Originally, as drafted, it was 13 years. Rep. Soper started a great conversation on how that sunset timeline being so long means that people who are in the legislature right now aren't going to have a say when it comes up again. I agreed and thought it was a great amendment to shorten it to eight years.

Is there any further discussion on the committee report? Seeing none, the question before us is this passage. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, no. The ayes have it. The Judiciary Committee report passes. to the bill. Is there any further discussion on House Bill 1186, Rep Soper?

Rep Mavery.

Is there any further discussion on House Bill 1186? Seeing none, the question before us is its passage. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed, no. The ayes have it. House Bill 1186 passes.

To the committee report.

Seeing none, the question before us is the passage of the Business, Affairs, and Labor Committee report. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed, no. The ayes have it. The committee report is adopted. To the bill.

Is there any further discussion on House Bill 1181? Seeing none, the question before us is its passage. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, no. The ayes have it. House Bill 1181 passes.

The House will stand in a brief recess. Madam Majority Leader. Oh, I'm sorry. The committee will come back to order. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to lay over House Bill 1181 and Senate Bill. Madam Majority Leader, we have passed 1181. Madam Majority Leader. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I know. I'd like to withdraw my motion. The motion is withdrawn. Thank you. I'd like to lay over Senate Bill 21 until Monday. Senate Bill 21 is laid over until Monday. The House will stand in a brief recess. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. The committee will come back to order Madam Majority Leader. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move the committee rise and report. You have heard the motion. Seeing no objection, the committee will... Rise and report. Rise and report. Thank you. Thank you. The House will come back to order.

Members, the motion before us is the House adopt the report of the Committee of the Whole.

Representative Hamrick, how do you vote?

Representative Rutnell, how do you vote? Yes. Representative Routnell votes yes. Representative Ricks, how do you vote? Representative Ricks is excused. That's fine. Cool. Rep Weinberg, thank you. Please close the machine.

Mr. Schiebel.

House Bill 1130 by Representative Storyan Jackson, also Senators Cutter and Judah, concerning baby diaper changing stations in restrooms accessible to the public. Madam Majority Leader.

Mr. Schiebel, please open the machine and members proceed to vote.

I vote yes. Representative Hamrick votes yes.

With 59 a, 3 no, and 3 excused, the motion is adopted. Members, we are in thirds. Thank you.

The motion before us is the adoption of House Bill 1299 on third reading and final passage.

Representative Hamrick, how do you vote?

Representative Rutnell, how do you vote? Yes. Representative Routenel votes yes.

Please close the machine. Mr. Schiebel, please read the title to House Bill 1102. House Bill 1102 by Representative Lindsay, also Senator Snyder, concerning the funding of the Colorado Drives Vehicle Services account and the Highway Users Tax Fund.

Mr. Schiebel, please open the machine and members proceed to vote.

Regrettably, no. Representative Hamrick votes no.

When in winter, please close the machine.

Madam Speaker, thank you. I know we had quite a bit of debate yesterday, and I believe that everybody is probably pretty clear. That'll be a no. I would encourage a no. And I'm going to give a little bit of a recap from some of the conversation, at least, as the bill kind of relates to my issues with it. I told a story twice yesterday. I'll give an abbreviated version of it again today, that I have a good friend of mine that is an FFL. he does not do this as his primary employment because if he were to do this as his primary employment he wouldn't be able to make ends meet this is something that he has done he's kind of reached for the gold ring so to speak that you try to start a business create something for yourself be an entrepreneur and see if you have that ability to make that grow He's been keeping his FFL going for a while, but he has a full-time job that actually worked probably at least 60 hours a week with. His FFL is home-based out in Watkins, Colorado. Not a lot out there. And he has some folks come out and occasionally buy a firearm or two that he makes a very, very insignificant profit from. it's not an easy business to be in. Margins are very thin. That's one story. And that's one story that I'm close to because I know him and I know how hard it has been for him to be able to keep his business going. Particularly with the regulations that we put around these businesses, many businesses all business in Colorado. Again we're six most regulated states in the nation and I'm telling you that if you tell that to an FFL dealer they're going to say there's no way we've got to be at least you know I don't know top one. As a matter of fact I just found out today that he is not working his full time job. He is at home being audited, going through paperwork. Now, at one point, I had hoped to be able to remove some of the difficulty with some of the duplicative layers of permitting on FFLs. I ran some policy last year to hope to do that. It failed at the time. It was because we were worried that the ATF would be abolished and we need to have the duplicative nature of those regulations here in Colorado. to ensure that they were still going to be upheld. So he's at home, not able to work. Now, at some point, that is just kind of the business of being in the business of an FFL. What bothers me about this bill is that yet we're trying to strangle even further many businesses that are family-based businesses, small-based businesses, businesses that sometimes go back a generation or more, sometimes businesses that are in rural parts of the country or the counties and part of our state that are not, you know, they're not making money hand over fist folks. And yet this bill, even though despite our efforts yesterday and what we tried to do, goes straight to a very steep fiscal punitive nature on a second offense Clerical errors are something that my buddy in Watkins Colorado might do once There goes your free pass. You're done. Coming at you again, taking his house, taking his cars, taking everything. I mean, $100,000. We weren't able to work around that. weren't able to work around that piece of it, which I was hoping that we could get to for a cure period. At least an opportunity. I understand that it doesn't matter if you're an FFL or if you're laying asphalt. There are going to be bad actors in every single business. It's just the nature, right? And legislation really should be geared to trying to root out the bad actors, to try to ensure that we're providing a public service to the residents of Colorado, that we're providing some sort of protection to the residents of Colorado, because what we're doing is ensuring that we're not allowing bad actors to continue to go unchecked. However, when we are going after businesses and we're going after hardworking families of Colorado and we're already strapping them with the regulations we have, but now we're coming after them and basically shutting them down, I'm going to oppose that. I'm going to stand up and say I believe that this is policy that we ought to take a second look at. I believe this is policy that ought not to be structured in such a steep, punitive nature as it is. The personal story for me gives me a little context within this. I would tell you that without the personal story, without that personal connection, I would still be opposed to it. I'd still be opposed just from a fundamental standpoint of further regulating businesses and hardworking families that are just trying to get by with something that they do here in Colorado. I understand they sell guns, and we don't like guns. But goodness, you know, there are a lot of these folks that are just trying to get by. Small businesses. Small businesses are the heartbeat of the state. small and medium businesses, and we continue to just throttle them. This bill continues to make that worse, and I would ask that we pause for a little bit and just consider who it is that we're hurting and ask for a no vote.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I usually wait to speak towards the end, but the good representative for Douglas County had brought up stories about businesses, and I told you all a story yesterday, but nobody can tell it better than the person I was speaking about. So I received this email last night. I listened to your speech about the amendment on the floor yesterday. Thank you for continuing to fight for my home state. It has been a huge relief to my business moving it across to the line akin to Kansas. I have moved my family across the line as well. I speak almost daily to Coloradans who ask me about my experience of moving out of state. On April 11th, I am selling the former gun shop in Walsh. The property taxes have increased more than a factor of three because I invested in Main Street, rural Colorado. And frankly, I don't want a state that is hostile and getting more of my struggling dollars. I can't imagine who would want to purchase it for a tax-generating purpose in a rural, small business, hostile environment. that will seal shut the possibility of reopening in Colorado for my business He goes on to wish us the best but it just sad because he signed sincerely his name prior constituent And these are the real world stories that we talk about from here. This is a family who has lived in the southeast corner forever, and it is a family who has had his business run out of the state and has hurt my district. That's why I stand up here and fight for House District 47. that's why I fight for the little people of House District 47 and I just wanted you to share or hear that straight from him it's the story I referenced yesterday and it was just crazy he emailed me last night so as we make these decisions please think about Mr. Wright who used to be a citizen of Colorado

Thank you Madam Speaker Good afternoon, fellow colleagues. Last year we had a few other bills literally driving at killing businesses that sell firearms. Last year, those of you who were here heard the story of my constituent foundation firearm, 40 years in Loveland, literally have to close his shop. That was the fourth business in my city, small mom and pop, selling to my constituents for 40-plus years that moved out to Texas. Big stores like Shields and Bass Pro, they can afford these changes. The changes that were implemented a year ago, Shields, where you get to lock down the whole area, they can afford it. It doesn't hurt them. The mom and pop that sells the first .22 caliber to a kid learning how to compete shoot, those are gone. We are killing businesses, this industry specifically. Again, every single year, we receive signatures from constituents. I'd place a wager that all of you have 10,000-plus petitions sitting at your office today from people of all walks of life, Democrats, unaffiliates, Republicans, all asking you to take a step back and look into the business aspect. That is not being conducted here. I am saddened for the fourth year in a row to have another bill that I'm going to have to go back and explain to House District 51 of why we let this happen. We are squeezing businesses. Gun legislation, we've heard you. Colorado's heard you. and now they're saying it's enough. I urge you to take those signatures that you received today. Take them to heart, find out who they are, and vote no on this bill.

Thank you Madam Speaker As my colleague just said this is an attack on small businesses It's not just firearms, though. A lot of the legislation that comes out of this building is an attack on buildings, whether it's small or large, and it imposes regulation that does not make the public safer. This bill does not make the public safer. It allows the Department of Revenue to act like ATF. It imposes ridiculous trainings, duplicative paperwork, searches, and adds requirements the ATF doesn't even require. Let's talk about the trainings. Right now, gun stores are required to take a training where employees have to take this training within 30 days of employment, and they have to receive a 70% or higher. That takes time away from them actually doing their job, and this is at the expense of the employer. This has to be done annually. This new bill imposes another training that requires them to get training on how to properly use a firearm, which, as I said yesterday, is an insult. You're not going to hire somebody who does not know how to handle a firearm properly. That's like hiring somebody who works at a computer store who doesn't know how to use a computer. All of this training is redundant and a waste of time, and it's at the employer's expense. The paperwork that is required, I want to go over just some of the paperwork. So ATF. ATF requires that gun stores or any federal firearm licensee that they, when they get a firearm, because I don't think that a lot of people in this room understand actually what takes place when you get a firearm. So when a gun store gets a firearm, they write down where the gun came from. They write down the make, the model, the caliber, the serial number, the type of firearm, the date that it was received, the FFL that it came from, which would be the manufacturer. And then when that gun is sold, they put the buyer's name, the date, the transaction. Of course, it's already in that same line of what firearm they're talking about that was sold, the address, the driver's license, and the approval number. At any point, ATF can come and check these businesses and make sure that they're in compliance. What this bill does and what the bill did last year that passed is it allows Department of Revenue, who I would actually argue probably needs the training more than the employees, it allows them to come and check this paperwork. work. This new bill requires that now there's an additional form that FFLs have to fill out, and that includes name, age, address, mate caliber, finish number, and serial number, date of transaction, and employee's name. Last year, the bill that passed, they have to fill out it's a form 7606 it's the Colorado Firearm Dealer Acquisition and Deposition Record this includes very similar to ATF so the federal firearms licensee number where the gun came from the business name business phone number business email address physical address of the manufacturer or the um The distributor, and then the type of firearm, the make, model, caliber, serial number, and then the day that it was sold, acquisition, date, the name that it was sold to, the person, the buyer's address, and so forth. Then there is the firearms dealer log transaction. And this is when you sell a firearm. This is the Form 7602. and this requires all of the business's information, but in addition to that, it also requires the type of transaction, the transaction date, the name, the address, the resident's address, the gender, ethnicity, race, occupation, their date of birth, and then the type of firearm, the make, model, caliber, and serial number. all of this just to sell a firearm that has a markup of about $50. I know you guys like to think that businesses have all this money and they make a ton. Small businesses, there's a very small margin. And I can say, I can attest, my parents, I have a family business. They've been in business for 45 years, and we are cutting it very thin. And every year, my dad says that he just wants to give up the gun industry because of all of the paperwork that's involved. All of this just to make $50 on a freaking gun. All of this paperwork that you would have to fill out on one single firearm. Not to mention the trainings that your employers have to go through that you as a firearms owner or, yeah, as a gun store owner has to go through. Or anybody else who touches a firearm. and then on top of that the department of revenue can stop by at any time and make sure that you're in compliance and i will say that gun owners ffls firearms instructors all of these people are probably the most law-abiding citizens that i've ever met they have to take incredibly detailed records of all of the stuff that they do. My father had to employ two additional employees just to keep up with the paperwork. There's a reason why Colorado stands six for most regulated. I urge a no vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This morning, I was listening. I actually really listen, usually pretty well, to all the happenings. This morning, our audit committee had a bill that they presented, and somebody said something that just stuck with me. They said, you know, this is an evenly split committee. It's a bicameral, bipartisan committee. We set aside party politics to do what's right for Colorado. And I thought, wow, wouldn't it be wonderful if that were all the bills that came through here, that we were evenly split committees that would hear each other and set aside party politics to do what's right for all of Colorado. And really, he said, they really listened to each other. When the original bill passed regarding regulating of FFLs, citizens spoke and FFL spoke and their representatives spoke and they were warning about issues with the bill that now here we are with a cleanup trying to fix Because at that time the eye was on pushing through the legislation regardless of opposing voices that have merit this is a prime example of a situation that happened with the original bill where people just didn't listen to each other. I think hearing each other and really hearing each other's opposing viewpoints and why somebody says, I have a problem with this because of X, Y, or Z, and let's try and fix it. Let's try to come to the table and fix it instead of just having a narrow viewpoint of this is the way the bill is going to be because this is our fix. Now here we are with a cleanup. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Today's solution is tomorrow's problem. And I've also said criminals don't follow the laws. for House District 65 I've heard from a lot of you in House District 65 and I will be voting no for our small business owners for our small business owners who are FFLs and for the people who long for the Colorado of 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 or 50 years ago I'm a no and I encourage my colleagues to reconsider their previous votes if they voted for this and vote no.

Representative Clifford. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in response to my colleague who is talking about the advocacy for firearms legislation and tens of thousands of petitions that may be at our doors today. I want to be responsible for. I've received those before. I'm assuming they're from the same organization that normally brings them around, and they're neither petitions nor signed. They are photocopied documents that when we scan them all every year and put them in and try to find someone from our district that we can contact, we very rarely find almost anyone that is a real person or is a person that is registered in any way that I can find an email for or a telephone number for. And they're not at all outreach to my office. A petition should have a way to contact you, an address, a phone number, something, an email. but 10,000 sheets of paper with a bunch of names on them that we can't even find as voters or people that live in our district is not something that I count as real or a way to communicate with me. And I've gotten nine emails on this bill from people in my district. And if you email me or want to talk to me about any bill that's going before this General Assembly, I will respond to you. If you call me, I will talk to you on the phone, and I appreciate that coming from people from within my district. Not that I don't listen to people from around the state, but I don't want people to think that what we receive here or what I may find outside my door today to be something that is useful even in determining that someone from this state has an interest in this bill. So I want that on the record as well as you want it on the record that we got 10 pieces of paper outside our door Thank you Representative Kelty

And we had a large debate on this yesterday, and not everyone was here in the room to listen, unfortunately, but I know the colleagues on my side, we were all here, and we were fighting very hard. I know that I received a lot of emails on this bill, all asking me to please say no, to help fight against this bill, and that's exactly what I did and my colleagues. You know, I agree with everything that my colleagues have said. This is an absolutely atrocious bill. I agree with that wholeheartedly. I brought up the fiscal note because I find it ironic because on the fiscal note, it shows basically a zero fiscal note. You know, it's not a financial sweat off the state of Colorado. They don't have to pay for anything. But you know who will have to pay? The small businesses in Colorado. They're the ones who are paying what you're doing. It's devastating financially for every FFL and business in Colorado that this bill touches. We heard several times, and even today, that we're taking away the Second Amendment rights, that we're killing businesses, shutting down gun shops, chasing gun owners out of the state, and more. But I want my colleagues on my side to understand, every time you say that, I shake my head. Because it's known. They know this. They know businesses are going to suffer. They know that it's chasing people out of the state, Second Amendment people out of the state. They know they're shutting down gun stores. They know they're shutting down FFLs. They know that they're leaving the state. but that's the plan. That's what they want and that is the plan. These are just facts. We want them to care that they're doing these things but that's not there. That will never happen. Bills like this solidify the plan to drive any 2A, Second Amendment business and residents in Colorado who support the Second Amendment out of Colorado. They want us gone. They want us out. And this is how they do it. Death by a thousand cuts. It's a shame. Because we stand up here so many times, almost every day, fighting for all of our amendments, all of our rights. It's falling on deaf ears. I don't know what we can do to get the ears to open. But just understand, I believe that they are open, and it's part of the plan. So the more we fight, the more they just don't care.

Representative Bradley. Thank you, Madam Speaker. And I will say the petitions that I got served, my name was on it, and a bunch of people that I know from my district that signed it. So I got plenty of real people in mind. I don know what happening in other districts but in HG39 I got plenty Happy Friday Love third reading Like I say every time it nice and quiet And even if you actively not listening you passively have to So hopefully there some mustard seeds being planted Members, we've been here before. Another year, another bill, another promise that this new restriction will finally make Colorado safer. And yet, year after year, we continue to see the same results. But this one is simply duplicative and repetitive. Over the past two decades, this legislator has passed more than 30 gun-related laws, background check expansions, magazine limits, red flag laws, waiting periods, storage requirements, and more. Each one was sold as a necessary step toward public safety. But here's the question we have to be honest enough to ask. If those laws worked, why are we still here? Why are we still seeing communities struggle with crime? Why are we still ranking among the worst in the nation in key categories? Because the truth is, these policies are not addressing the root problem. Let's talk about the reality in Colorado. In recent years, Colorado has ranked in the top ten nationally for violent crime and even higher when you combine violent and property crime. Auto theft surged to among the highest rates in the country. Violent crime rose sharply after 2019, reaching levels we haven't seen since the 1980s. This did not happen in a vacuum, and it certainly didn't happen because law-abiding citizens suddenly became criminals. In fact, we know the data, and the data states that law-abiding gun owners stop crime upwards of 1.6 to 2.5 million times every year. And yes, we've seen reports of a recent small dip in crime in the last year. That's a great thing. Everyone in this chamber wants safer communities. But let's not confuse a short-term fluctuation with long-term success. A temporary decrease does not justify permanent restrictions on constitutional rights that shall not be infringed on. A single year's decline does not undo a decade of increases in anti-gun laws. It does not validate years of policy decisions, and it does not justify continuing down the same path without question. Because the real uncomfortable truth is that criminals do not follow laws. They do not comply with background checks. They do not respect magazine limits. They do not register their weapons. and they certainly are not deterred by yet another regulation passed in this chamber. But who does follow the law? Let's talk about those people that you're regulating against. The single mother who wants to protect her children, the elderly couple who wants to defend their home, members of the disability community who want to have an equalizer, the small business owner closing up shop late at night, or the waitress leaving her job at midnight walking the streets of Denver, the veteran who understands the responsibility of firearm ownership, and the law-abiding citizen who has done everything right and continues to have their rights trampled on. Those are the people affected by this bill. And every time we pass legislation like HB 2611-26, we make it just a little bit harder for them to exercise a God-given constitutional right, a right that exists not for convenience but for protection. we are placing the burden of crime on the backs of the people who are not committing it we are restricting the rights of those who obey the law while the individuals who actually pose a threat continue to ignore it it's At some point, we have to ask ourselves, are we solving the problem? Are we simply creating the appearance of action? Because real public safety requires more than symbolism. It requires addressing repeat offenders. It requires enforcing the laws we already have and creating new ones aimed at criminal activity. It requires confronting the breakdown we're seeing in accountability and consequences. And yes, it requires acknowledging something that is difficult to legislate. legislate. Guns are not the problem. If they were, Colorado, with its long list of firearm regulations, would be one of the safest in the country. But we are not. The issue is not an inanimate object. The issue is the moral compass of individuals who choose to commit crimes, individuals who time and time again demonstrate a willingness to harm others regardless of what the law says. And no amount of additional regulation on responsible citizens is going to fix that. What it will do is continue a dangerous thread, a trend where the rights of law-abiding Coloradans are steadily chipped away, piece by piece, in response to actions that they did not commit. And in the end, they are the ones paying their price. Members, we all want safer communities. The goal is not partisan. It is shared. But repeating the same approach and expecting a different result is not sound policy. It's the definition of insanity and for good reason. It is time to stop targeting the wrong people, the law-abiding citizens of our state. It's time to start focusing on real solutions, and it's time to stand up for the rights of the citizens we represent and swore an oath to protect and defend. I will be a strong no on this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I'm somewhat sorting through which emotion I feel the most about this. I'm not going to use the mad emotion about it, because I don't know that that's effective. I would implore you, though, to listen to me for a minute. I, too, received the petitions that everybody's going to receive. I'm certain that you will find the name of one individual in there. His name is Scott Slaw. He signed that. He's a real person. He's a real person. I guarantee he's a real person. I found his petition in my box, along with other people who I know personally. They signed that. They are begging you to reconsider this for many reasons. To start, my friend Aaron signed it because he is one of at least a dozen small town FFLs in my district. I don't know that there's very many more. I don't know how many FFLs, Milligan, Johnstown, Berthoud, Mead, and West Greeley need, but I know that we need a good number. Competition is always good. I know that there's significant consideration that he and others, at least one of them that I know for sure in my district, are considering leaving, even though Colorado is their home because they don't expect that they will be able to continue to be as viable in their businesses as they have been in the past after one more law is passed. Consider that. You're driving out real Coloradans These are not fake made name people despite what some others may say They are real people This government should not deny, impede, or discriminate against the exercise of a federal or state right. Shouldn't do that. That's exactly what's happening. We all know what the Second Amendment says, and we all know what the Colorado Constitution says about the right to keep and bear arms. This will make it so that it's harder for individuals, for citizens, for Coloradans to be able to exercise their constitutional rights, because it will mean that there will be fewer dealers in Colorado to be able to purchase a firearm from. Again, this will drive out business in a time when we already have fiscal constraints. This is not a wise bill. I haven't even gotten into, and I probably won't get very deep into the consideration that the Second Amendment exists for specific reasons. It's not so that I can buy a hunting firearm. It's not for that. it's so that people like me and every other veteran that has served and other every other law-abiding firearm owner out there can own firearms to protect their family to protect their community to protect their state and to protect their nation against government overreach if the government eventually someday goes too far this is another another step towards the government going too far? How many more steps will the government take before the government takes that final step that is entirely too far? And then by that point, will we have regulated the people who are standing there to protect every other citizen's life out of their ability to protect them? That is a concern that I have. I don't think that that's a crazy concern to have. I think it's a real and legitimate concern to have. I think that you can look around through history. I think that you can look around through geopolitics today and see that there are problems. It's absolutely true. I could stand up here for a long time and give you reasons. You've heard some. You're going to hear more. This is a bad bill. It is not right for the people of Colorado. It is not right for Americans.

Thank you, Chair. I do believe that these bills, when I say these, I mean not just these three, but all of the many dozens and dozens over the last few years that have come down that are just like this, that I hear some of my colleagues, and I understand why they say this when they say unintended consequences. I always struggle with that because I think the consequences are known going in. I think the consequences are known as the bills are being written. This continues to destroy companies, continues to destroy gun shops, continues to destroy the mom and pop shops, continues to destroy the FFLs that are operating out of their house. All of these different groups. And I've been here long enough to remember when the last time they brought the petitions that have been referenced a couple of times. the last time they brought the petitions put them in people's offices and I watched one representative talk about how they were going to throw them away do all kinds of things to them that shouldn be done laughed at them made fun of them got videoed doing it and then wants to come up here and tell us that they didn't have a lot of impact. Well, you've got to look at them before they can have impact, not make fun of them and throw them away. So they do make impact. I have my name. I have people in my district that are constituents that have their names on them. But you've got to look at them. instead of just to ride them. And so we do know that this is a conflict in this room, that we can spend all day on our side saying this, you know, the Constitution, fight for people's rights. That means nothing in here. We know that. And so we're just going to keep getting up and saying it because truth actually has the ability to push back. When you speak truth, it pushes back against the darkness. It pushes back against the things that are not true. And so we just keep speaking truth, and then eventually truth rises to the surface, and we're vindicated. But more important than, like, our side being vindicated, truth is vindicated. And that's more important, and that will be happening. That will be happening. And we're doing a tiny little bit of that fight right now, me and my colleagues, as we get up and say this stuff.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So I've lived in Colorado all my life. And I remember when I was 14 years old and my brother was 13, school was out, and my dad took us up to the cabin and he gave us just a few things. He filled the propane refrigerator with enough food for us to last a week. He gave us a shovel, and he gave us a breaking bar, and he wanted us to dig holes for a half a mile of fence. And the last thing that he gave us was a gun. So I was 14. My brother was 13. My dad had something going on. He wasn't going to be there for a week. So he left this 14-year-old and this 13-year-old and a gun and a shovel and a pick to dig these holes for this fence line that was a half a mile long. And he said, I'll be back in a week, and the gun is for your protection. Why I'm telling this story is when I was, I think, 9 or 10, I don't remember for sure, he gave me a gun. I lived on a big ranch and he said you can go out there and you can hunt if you want as long as there's no people around. And so I go out there and I see a cottontail rabbit and I shot that cottontail rabbit. And then I broke down and I bawled my eyes out because it bothered me so bad that I had killed that rabbit. And I never wanted to kill anything again in my life after that happened to me. well when he I was about 12 my dad had a horse and that horse had distemper if anybody knows what distemper is it's an uncurable disease and it was up there in in the corral and it was laying on its side and it was suffering and it was it was kicking thrashing and it was dying and it was in extreme pain and my dad says I love that horse so bad he says I want you to go up there I can't do it son will you go up there and will you shoot that horse between its eyes and put it out of misery and I did I went up there It was one of the hardest things I ever did And I bawled my eyes out I can tell you instance after instance where I've had to do that with a tool. We think they are a tool. The gun is a tool where I live. And I think I've figured it out. I think digging those holes made me stronger than I probably should have been. And I'm watching what's going on, and I think there's a lot of people in here that are making decisions that maybe haven't had adversity or something. It's pretty soft here. I mean, my gosh, we live in a beautiful place here in the city, and everything's handed to you as long as you've got $10 in your pocket. It's not really that hard. Some guy on the Internet all the time, what's his name, David Goggin, says, stay hard, stay hard. We've lost that hardness in this state. We have lost taking care of each other and doing the hard things. But what you're doing here on restriction for the firearm dealers, because them are our friends, them are the people that we go when we need more shells so that we have to do the hard things that we don't want to do. And I'm going to be honest right here. I haven't hunted in 15 years. I killed a deer. I killed an elk. And I don't have any desire to do that. But I do have that desire to keep them guns in place because I have daughters. And I need those girls to be able to protect themselves. They both know how at a very early age to do that. I see what's going on here. Has anybody ever seen Australia? They took their guns away, and how's that going? Every one of them had to wear a mask and have a vaccine. And then we see what happened in Britain. They took all their guns away, and what do they do? They're stabbing each other. It's not going to quit. But sometimes we better just stay a little bit harder and quit being so dang soft and teach our kids the proper use of that tool, because where I live, we can't live without it, and I'm a hard no on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Members, I want to speak to this bill and as a business owner, in the business owner aspect. Of course, this bill doesn't affect me directly in my business, but it does affect business 100%. We have come accustomed in this chamber to run legislation that pushes business out of the state. it's time and time again the excuse, the reasoning for a lot of people, a lot of businesses leaving the state is because of us. It truly is. This is one more step towards that. Overregulation I have seen, not just in this industry, in the gun industry, but I've seen it firsthand in oil and gas. and to be 100% honest that is the reason why I'm here one of the reasons why I'm here because of the over regulation of industry I've seen it happen to my industry of oil and gas even though that we do everything safely cleanly to take care of our environment to take care of our people to take care of our communities that live around it it still happens and one of the reasons is because some of the people here don't really understand how how it works over there. I see that with this bill. There are many people on both sides of the aisles that understand how a gun works, that understands what it could be used for, the good, the bad, everything. The pros outweigh the cons by a lot. And we're running legislation to regulate this industry, push businesses out, people out of this state. Not just that, revenue. If the business aspect is not touching your heart, then the revenue should. Because you know what? You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to drive over to Wyoming, buy my gun there. Drive over to Nebraska, where it's cheaper because they don't have to do so much paperwork. And quite frankly, some of those businesses are already moving to Wyoming. I know one of them in Windsor that moved from Windsor to Wyoming because of the overregulation, all the paperwork. For what? $50, like the good representative from El Paso said? $50 gain on a gun sale. it just blows my mind how how simple it is how simple this legislation is being passed here simply this legislation is being passed here and how much of a big effect it actually happens out in the state big box stores like some of the other representatives that came up here said They can afford it because, you know what, they do business outside the state too. That's where they get their money. That's where they get their big margins. Here they continue to operate for the smaller margins and they can afford this. But the small businesses, my favorite gun store is in Brighton, Rocky Mountain Pond. I'm afraid they're going to be leaving. That's where I go to get shot for my guns. And don't get me wrong, I don't buy very many. They are expensive. and I'd rather spend that money on my family but I sometimes enjoy having a new gun going out and shooting a new gun and just like another bill that we're going to be hearing here a little bit later the uppers I like buying uppers because I can shoot different types of bullets and different types of hunting styles depending on the size of the barrel which is an upper receiver like I said we'll get to that conversation when that comes but I'm just saying this one right here it's going to affect business and that's the way I'm going to I'm going to frame this for everybody hopefully that understands a little bit better that the business is going to be leaving our state these small businesses and family businesses are going to be affected big time I will be a strong no on this one as well

Thank you, Madam Speaker and colleagues. We talked a lot on this bill yesterday, mostly amendments trying to make it better or less worse. Most everything failed. I do oppose the bill. This year, like several others, but probably more so this year, has been overshadowed by our budget issues. And it's amazing how many bills we get that have a zero fiscal note. But having a zero fiscal note doesn't necessarily mean it's a good bill. Because if you haven noticed government doesn produce money It just takes it And whenever we got a bill without a fiscal note generally what we're doing is regulating others. And that's what this bill does. It just adds more burden, just like many, many, many bills that have preceded it, that are impacting our legitimate businesses. If you look back four or five years, maybe not even that far, we were running surpluses over our Tabor limit of billions. Now, we had to give a lot of that back, and that's because we should. But it also indicated that our business community was thriving, that revenue was coming in. It was overfilling our coffers. That doesn't happen anymore. It's not happening this year. We're not even hitting the Tabor limit. We have destroyed the businesses that feed this government, and now we're just turning to regulate things that we don't like. There are problems in our state. Our gun dealers are not causing them, but this bill targets them. This isn't a crime bill. It's not a bill that's aimed at violent offenders. It's not a bill that targets those that threaten the safety of our communities. It is a bill that targets people that are operating lawfully. The licensed, the visible, the regulated, the small business owners that are already struggling to comply with things we've passed in previous years. That's who's getting hit. The bill expands requirements. It expands paperwork. It expands training requirements. It expands security mandates. It expands reporting. It expands penalties. originally up to $100,000. Graciously, that was reduced to $75,000. And that is just hitting a business over the head with a slightly smaller hammer. It really doesn't do anything to help. This isn't moderation. It's just a continuation of the pattern. The majority does not need to ban firearms outright. They know they cannot do that. but they keep making lawful commerce that much harder. More expensive, more risky, more vulnerable to technical violations, more vulnerable to punishment by the government until eventually, as my colleagues have mentioned before, the industry is going to disappear. Businesses are going to move away piece by piece. We will lose the ability to purchase a firearm in this country, this state. Excuse me. That's why so many people look at bills like this and conclude the majority has a clear distaste for firearms. It's not just a concern about misuse. It's not a concern about crime. It's a real hostility to the very existence of firearms in private hands. And firearms in private hands is something that our state and federal constitutions are meant to protect. and because you can't erase that right directly you're going after the businesses that make the lawful exercise of that right possible we're going after the dealers they're going after the transfers they're going after the records going after the infrastructure they're going after the lawful path to gun ownership because if you can kill off the industry you can choke off the right to bear arms in this state But again let go back to what the bill doesn do It doesn't stop cartel activity. It doesn't stop black market trafficking. It doesn't stop the violent felon who already ignores every law in the books. I think we all know that criminals don't comply with regulatory schemes. They don't fear paperwork, that's for sure. They don't lose sleep over whether their deal or security plan is going to be approved or over reporting rules. Lawful businesses do that. And in rural Colorado, in the areas that I represent, that matters. In my district, firearms are a part of life. They are tools that are used in the day-to-day activities that take place on farms and ranches. They are used for hunting. They're used for predator control. They're used for self-defense. And as my colleague earlier said, sometimes they have to be used to put down a treasured animal. People in my district don't all live five minutes away from law enforcement response. They don't have easy access to services. When this body drives out one more lawful dealer, it's going to be rural Colorado that pays the price first. And that's what makes this bill truly offensive to me. It's not just burdensome. from this building, its legislative arrogance. It assumes the state should just keep tightening the screws on lawful people because the majority dislikes the subject matter. This is not good governance. But I'll remind you, and we've seen this throughout history, that rights are not destroyed all at once. They're worn down. One mandate at a time, one fee at a time, one record at a time. one penalty at a time, one closed business, one business moving out of the state at a time. And again, what this bill does is punish the lawful, the legitimate. It puts pressure on those that are trying to comply, and it moves Colorado one step closer to this pipe dream of a gun-free Colorado by trying to regulate this lawful industry into the ground. So it's not a bill about safety. I wish it were. If it had a fiscal note, it might show that we were actually finding something worthy of supporting. But we're not willing to put any money out there to do anything. But we are willing to put more requirements on those that are just trying to make a living and feed their kids and serve their communities. This bill just squeezes lawful commerce. We're choking our businesses to death. one bill at a time in this building. So regardless of the topic, whether this was gun dealers or any other business, we should not be putting more and more requirements on folks. Maybe if we started releasing some of that, we'd get back to these surpluses of the billions. We'd have money to run our services. People would have more money in their own pockets and wouldn't need as much service from the government. And I know that's frightening to some because it takes away the thing that is important to us as a government, which is having authority and having the ability to direct what people do with their lives by making them subject to us, the government. So let's vote no on this. Let try to put some more money back in the hands of people because money in your own pocket is freedom And that is what we should be supporting here so thank you very much Representative Hartzook

Good afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to direct your attention to the title. It says, Requirements for Firearms Dealer. The first word is requirements. What does requirements mean? what else do we place requirements on? Some of the things are good. We place requirements on going to school. We place requirements on graduating with an education. We place requirements if you're going to trade school to go to work. And what else has this body done? This body, over the past decade, has legislated requirements upon nearly every single industry throughout the state. And what are the results of those requirements? Well, start with oil and gas industry requirements. Industry has dramatically decreased. Our revenue from that has dramatically decreased. What has that brought us? If you saw the headlines today, what does it say? $1.5 billion deficit. $1.5 billion. Who contributes to the economy? You have big businesses, but 90% of it is small businesses. Small businesses are the engine of Colorado. Small businesses are the engine of America. And every single time that we place a requirement on any industry, it has a fiscal cost to it. It has a financial repercussion. We've done it to oil and gas. We've done it to agriculture. We've done it to housing. We've done it to construction. if that said requirements for automotive dealers, your vehicle, the truck you bought, the car you bought, the EV vehicle you bought, its price would go up because we, this legislative body, put a requirement and that has a cost. And that drives that price up. It also tends to drive out of business. Those businesses are doing it. Your larger businesses can absorb those costs. Your smaller ones, usually not. Agriculture industry, your smaller businesses have closed shop or sold out to the larger ag. Oil and gas, same thing. Construction, same thing. Firearms, same thing. They're not just nameless entities that are out there. These are friends. Some of them are our family members. I have two very good friends that are FFLs. They do this not as their primary business, but as a side. They enjoy doing it. One is, I mean, he's brilliant. He's like an engineer. He can design, create things, do all kinds of stuff with it. But the more requirements that we add to it, the more we're going to drive them out of business. because it keeps setting the cost up. At some point, consumers are going to make it more and more difficult for them to buy it because what else goes up for consumers? Everything. Housing industry. More requirements for everything we do. There's a few requirements that are good. Education is a good requirement. We want our kids to graduate with a good education, have a career, become an entrepreneur, create a better mousetrap out there, if you will, come up with an idea. So we need to have requirements to stimulate them, to motivate them. But when we put requirements on businesses, that stifles invention. That stifles innovation. That stifles desire. Because they sit there and they are like, what else is going to hit me? What else is going to impact my business? What's another realm that this hits it heavily in? Health care. We pass countless regulations on health care. Some of it we need for safety, but others becomes paperwork upon paperwork upon paperwork. And what does that do? That adds costs. Every requirement that comes out of this building adds a cost that is in the end paid for by the consumer. I don't care what it is, where it is, where your political philosophy lies, the more requirements that come from this building, the higher your costs go. So requirements to firearm dealers will have one net result. It will drive costs up. The secondary and tertiary impacts of that are your small businesses, some of them will look at it and go, this is no longer cost effective. I can't keep doing this because I'm losing money. Others will go, I don't have the simple time in the day to complete all the paperwork. Others will go, I have seen so many regulations, the headaches are no longer worth it. And then what do we as a society lose? We lose the immediate value of our friends that have these small businesses. We lose access to having a selection to go to, to choose what weapon we want to buy, whether it's for self-defense, hunting, sports shooting, trap and skeet. Heck, some people might go to the Olympics from here. You never know. We're known for skiing, but maybe somebody will pick up the trap and skeet shooting. There's a lot of Olympic sports that have shooting in it. But at some point, we're going to make it so expensive for them, they can't do it. Every time we add a requirement to anything, it stifles that innovation. It stifles that determination. Because it's another roadblock. So I ask you, what's the purpose of another roadblock if we're not enhancing the community? Is it to add to the $1.5 billion budget deficit we're facing? Is it to add to putting small businesses out of business? Is it adding because a political philosophy sees things one way? What is the end result? What are we striving towards? Because it certainly isn't the economic vitality of our community or our state. It certainly isn in defense of the Second Amendment or the First or the Third Fourth Fifth You can just run through your whole list of the Top Ten Bill of Rights Requirement after requirement adds to cost It runs things up, consumers pay for it, and we lose. That is neither a smart road to go down, it's neither a fiscally responsible road to go down, as the headlines of a $1.5 billion budget deficit can show you? Because you can't run your business that way. You can't run your own finances that way. But this body legislates that way. That's not good. That's not productive. That's not helpful. And to use everybody's favorite phrase, that's not equitable. I urge a no vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. House Bill 1126 is anti-business. This body is picking winners and losers at the expense of small family-owned businesses. I come from a family of entrepreneurs. my great grandpa came over from Germany he started a cement laying business as soon as he had enough money he went back and picked up his wife and first born son I have my mom was an entrepreneur my brother, my sister, uncles, cousins we've had and have as a family a gas station, coffee shops bowling alley, family amusement parks law firm, physical therapy products sales company. I was a property manager. I sold my business because of the laws that came out of this building. The regulation on so many businesses for a small owner like myself were too much to bear. I, along with my family members, I was proud to provide jobs. I was so proud. Through blood, sweat, and tears, oftentimes just getting by, sometimes taking a smaller paycheck than my employees. But you know what? There was a feeling of freedom in owning my own business. For myself and so many others, it's not about owning a house. It was about owning a business, being your own boss, that was my American dream. And this is the kind of bill, like so many others, that increases regulation. It will increase the cost of living. It will increase the cost of doing business. And worse yet, many businesses will close. These kind of laws eliminate ways of life. They eliminate people's ability to do what they want to provide for their family, to provide for their children, to provide for the employees that do the same and love what they do. It's over and over again, and we're killing small businesses that make this state go. I urge a no vote.

Thank you Madam Speaker Members I also rise to encourage a no vote but my focus will be particularly on page 5 of the bill This is where the penalties section are laid out I know we heard a lot about the Second Amendment today I'm going to focus more on the Eighth Amendment. Under the United States Constitution, the Eighth Amendment considers excessive fines. that's one of the three major provisions of the 8th amendment in 2019 the 8th amendment was incorporated to the states through a case called Tim's against Indiana and in that case it looked at whether the state administratively taking $40,000 worth of a vehicle for a minor drug offense constituted an excessive fine The court held that indeed it did. A crime becomes unconstitutional when it is grossly disproportionate to the offense. The court will consider several factors. Among these, the seriousness of the offense, the proportionality. Does the penalty match what's being considered? The harm caused. The greater the harm, the greater the fine. and the defendant's circumstances, such as the ability to pay based on what's happening. We'll start with, is it a fine? I think reasonable minds can say that when it says impose a fine of up to $75,000, it's a fine. So we can move on to the severity of the offense. If we're going to look at, for example, small drug sales, would say that's a minor offense for there to be something we're considering. It's nonviolent limited harm. Here we're looking at really what we're requiring of firearm dealers. In almost every case will be a paper offense. This will be a form not being perhaps filled out correctly, something missed, or the handling of firearms, it being observed that there was perhaps like a trigger lock not on correctly. The third step in the analysis is to compare the value of the fine. So in the case of taking a vehicle worth $40,000 for a minor drug offense, likely higher than what other statutory fines might be in this category or the actual harm of the vehicle or of the action caused. This would suggest a disproportionality. And then finally, the proportionality. Does the penalty match the crime? We've heard that saying over and over again. The bill does delegate, if you look down to lines 14 through 19 on page 5, it delegates the statutory fine structure, the severity cut points, and any mitigating factors to the Department of Revenue to be able to lay out. However, still within statute, it caps the maximum penalty at $75,000, which contemplates that the General Assembly is expecting the highest fine in this category to be at least $75,000. This is not proportional to Colorado's administrative fine structure, where we regulate professionals where the cap typically is $5,000. In review of these statutes I found that in administrative law for the regulation of professionals and heavily regulated industries there will be as much as $75,000 is quite a bit more than $5,000 and definitely quite a bit more than $10,000. This would suggest that the fine structure is outside of our typical statutory range. Considering the range of fines usually go from $100 to $5,000 when we hand that over to the department or the agency to start creating cut points, $75,000 being the maximum would once again still be outside of that. So in a comparable value test, it would fall foul of the test. And considering the severity of the offense, the requirements for the firearm dealers and state licensure focus on regulatory compliance. That's what has been asked for when we started the state licensure starting in 2025. The bulk of the compliance we're asking for is record keeping and procedures in the handling of firearms. These are nonviolent offenses. I would argue minor offenses. And in almost every case, these are going to be paper offenses. The proportionality of the fine would exceed the severity of the offense. This is the exact reason why our founders enacted the Eighth Amendment, was so that you would not have a scenario where a government could create a fine structure that would actually, to the individual, appear worse than even spending time in prison, because now you're basically locked into extreme fines that one would never reasonably contemplate could be assessed against them for the action that had occurred. And for the reasons of the Eighth Amendment alone, I will be a no vote.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker Pro Tem. Every tyrant fears a thinker more than an army. That's what Voltaire said. I'll say it again. Every tyrant fears a thinker more than an army. why well Oscar Wilde told us the answer it's found in ideas ideas are dangerous in fact an idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all firearms are utilized upon a framework a framework of ideas of beliefs every action we take in fact is sourced in ideas, in assumptions, in principles, in value systems, in expectations, I use this door, not that door, because of an idea, because of an expectation. Every act we take is grounded in ideas. Ideas are more dangerous than firearms. It's ideas that lead people to hate one another and move into violence. and yet I have yet to see a bill in my time here that regulates bookstores freedom of press, freedom of speech are just as much of an inalienable right and constitutional right as the right to self-defense As has been noted, there have been countless bills related to the right to self-defense. There haven't been corresponding bills related to bookstores. Let's consider these provisions and this statutory scheme as applied to bookstores. bookstores. Would this body be all right with the idea that every bookstore has to have a state permit, go through a long and extensive process to prove that they are capable of being entrusted with the idea of holding ideas for sale to others? would this body be alright with the idea that an individual possessing directly or indirectly the power to direct or cause the direction of the management and policies of someone who is selling books be subject to new training requirements new criminal standards for instance would this body be alright with saying to big box store CEOs that they have to go through layers of training before their particular box store could sell a book this bill requires that for firearms dealers would it be alright to do that to bookstores What about mandating that every single employee of that bookstore comply with certain training requirements in order to handle a book or be near them? Would that be okay? Would we be okay with that? What about record-keeping requirements? The representative from El Paso County outlined some of the records that have to be kept. Would we be all right with a record for every book that entailed who purchased it, where they work, their driver's license number, their birth date? Would that be okay? A hundred pages? Oh. How about securing the most dangerous books behind locked glass or in a secured room where only the trained employees can touch them? Would we be okay with that Suspicion inspections The idea that any person from the government can come and look through the records and see who bought what book at any time, for any reason, without any sort of probable cause or expectation that harm has been done. Would we be okay with that? I know the answer to these questions because I've heard the debates from the well about limiting materials in a library or a school. This body has soundly rejected any such quote-unquote censorship. How dare you? And yet for the right to self-defense, there's no hesitation whatsoever. Push that green button and move along. former Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia said that the second amendment is not a second class right and is not subject to an entirely different body of rules or should not be and yet here we are we are subjecting this particular industry to a whole new set of rules rules that will put these folks out of business and will make this right in a de facto way impossible to exercise. Due to federal regulation, you can't just go across state lines and buy a firearm. So if you can't get them here in Colorado, sorry, Coloradans, you're out of luck. again beautiful design for the people who sat down years ago and made a checklist and said these are all of the things we need to do in order to box out this right from Colorado beautiful check check but the interesting part about that is ideas continue to move unfettered. And in some circles, increasingly, those ideas are hostile. Hostile to peace. There's no desire to regulate the ideas, and yet there's a desire to regulate the tools which would protect against people acting on their ideas. which then creates an even more unsafe environment for us to live in. I will give the bill sponsors one thing with respect to this. In adding in that additional step of penalty, there is a response, a response to the feedback that, hey, for a second or subsequent offense, we either can give them a warning or we can revoke or suspend their license, and so there should be some middle ground. I appreciate that they sought to try and find a middle ground. To my good colleague from Delta, and to the amendment I put forth yesterday, I don't think this is the right middle ground, but I appreciate that part.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. but ultimately any cleanup that the FFLs have asked for in this I dare say is more of a plea a plea for assistance not a desire to see this scheme built out A plea to make it workable, not a request that says we support this idea. More of a plea, sir, can I have a little bit of freedom? Not an actual give. If you wouldn't regulate bookstores in this way, I'd ask you to follow Scalia and not make the Second Amendment a second class right and treat it the same.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, I don't want to have anybody have any doubts about how I'm going to vote. I will be a no. Second of all, I have seen over and over and over again both sides, but predominantly one more than the other, bring bills for an industry for which they have very little knowledge or experience with. And it becomes real obvious to those who have experienced the naivety of the sponsors. And that's what I think this bill is. It needs to be repaired, fixed, redone, or dropped. So therefore, I am a no today.

our small family operated generationally striving businesses the faster our revenue goes out of the state and the deeper in debt Colorado goes we cannot keep putting restrictions on Coloradans on our constitutional rights and putting unfunded mandates on our businesses like our good AML from Southeast Colorado I've I've had businesses reach out to me who are firearm dealers and small gun shops saying that they cannot survive this. Northeast Colorado, we border Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, and it doesn't take that many miles or that long of a drive to go over there for folks to buy different items that we are putting restrictions on here in the state. On behalf of Logan, Morgan, Phillip, Cedric, Washington, Yuma, and lots of Weld County, I am strong opposition. And on behalf of our small businesses that this is going to hinder and potentially destroy, I urge a no vote.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Remember yesterday when I got up here, I talked about a constituent of mine in Falcon, Colorado, and I just going to reiterate that along with a couple other constituents of mine that are in this industry here So a good friend of mine in Falcon Colorado veteran minority family family man He owned a small gun store in Falcon and I'd go there and I'd stop by and visit it and his family was always there. I'd usually stop by on the weekends. So his kids weren't in school and they would be there. His wife and three kids, very small mom and pop gun shop. And around late 24, early 25, I reached out to him. I said, Hey, uh, said his name. And I said, you know, I'm going to be driving by. I figured I'd stop by. And he said, he said, Hey, uh, I, I hate to tell you this, uh, but you know, I closed my store and I, you know, I said, well, that's unfortunate. I said, what's going on? And he said, he said, it's just not worth it anymore. He said, the laws that you guys are passing up at the legislature, he said, I can't afford to comply with them. And so when we talk about petitions, we talk about signatures, we talk about people, these are real people. I know these people. These are my people. I was in Monument about three weeks ago with my family, went to dinner, stopped by the grocery store, pick up a few things on the way home, pulled into the parking lot. And I pulled in next to a lady who had the back of her vehicle open. She was loading groceries in there. And I noticed on the side of her vehicle, it said the name of a store. It was a gun cleaning store. And so I do what I do, which drives my wife crazy. I got out and I just struck up a conversation with her in the parking lot, started talking to her. And I said, oh, I said, hey, is this here in Monument, this gun cleaning store? And she said, no, we're up in Palmer Lake. She said her and her husband are retired and this is just something they do on the side. And I said, well, you know, how are things going? And she goes, I just, I don't know if we're going to do it anymore. I said, well, why is that? She said, because of what the state's doing. And then I told her, you know, what I do. And I told her I'm not the one doing it. And so she appreciated that. We exchanged cards and information, but I believe they were retired military and this was their side business. And then I have another friend in Colorado Springs who owns a gun store and it's actually not in my district, just south of my district. And he, I think about a year and a half, two years ago, he, somebody stole a car and drove it through the front of his gun store and destroyed it. And he spent about a hundred thousand dollars repairing the front of his store, maybe more than that, repairing the front of his store and then putting in these shutters. And he installed them behind the window. And he did that on purpose because he said before they could start cutting into the shutters, they'd have to break the glass. And then he would be alerted once the glass is broke. And so when I see in this bill that it's requiring the security being on the outside of the window. I talked to him about that. And I said, well, you have the shutters. They're just on the inside of the window instead of the outside. I said, how much of those shutters cost you to put on the inside for your whole store? There's a lot of windows. And he said, I believe it was around $70,000. And he said, now I'm going to have to do this on the outside. And so when I hear people say things like, oh, this is just a cleanup bill from 2024. It's a cleanup bill. It's not a cleanup bill. It's an expansion bill. Because if you consider $70,000, not counterfeiting, the cameras and all the other things that are in this bill, that's not a cleanup bill. You're expanding the regulation. As my colleague from Parker said, the title says requirements. That's not cleanup. We're not fixing some commas and changing some words and updating some things. We're expanding the requirements on gun stores. And I asked my friend, I said, you know, what are you going to do? I said, you know, I think he can afford it. And he said, you know, it doesn't feel like it's worth it anymore. And he said, you know, I looked at maybe selling my business. And he said, just in the last couple of years, his business, the value of it has been cut in half because of the regulations that we're passing here. Cut in half because of what we do here, which has been his whole life's work. He's invested everything he has into this. and he has a wife and three kids and another one on the way. And so I think about that. I think about them. Those are real people. Those are people I know. And when we put these gun stores out of business, we're not putting the gun industry out of business. I mean, if I want to buy a gun, I'm just going to have to order it out of state, have it shipped here, go through FFL. I mean, Colorado doesn't get that revenue. I mean, you get your 28-cent delivery fee. congrats on that but you know with the budget situation we're doing we're literally closing down businesses here and then there was the fine the hundred thousand dollar fine which i appreciate the sponsors agreeing to lower that to 75 000 and when i when i asked why so high because under this bill i think very simple errors can result and be up to that 75 000 and I was told, well, the $100,000 number, that's because that's what liquor stores are or the liquor industry. And I just want to point out, we're not sitting here on a Friday evening debating three liquor bills. So forgive me if I think to myself, well, we don't treat the liquor industry the same way we treat the gun industry. I think we'd be much more hesitant to go up to $100,000 on a liquor store as opposed to a gun store. because we're not here debating every single year about liquor stores. I mean, we have had some liquor bills, and some of those went away. But I just want to bring it back home to these are real people. These are families. And what we do here, we're putting them out of business. They're life's work. They're life's savings. And even if they do manage to stay open for a little bit longer, they've lost all the value of their business. Because if you're going to sell a gun store to another potential gun store owner, they're going to have to follow all these requirements. And that hurts the value of the store itself. So I want you to think about that here in a second when we push these buttons. I'm sure you probably have one of these gun stores. And you have real people. you have families living in your districts who are saying, when is it enough? You just passed this original bill in 2024. Now here we are. That bill has barely even taken effect, and we've barely seen the outcomes of it. And we're not cleaning up that bill. We are expanding that bill. That's what this bill is. So for that obvious reason, I'll be a no.

Thank you Madam Speaker I appreciate everyone attention today and consideration of House Bill 1126 though it does feel as though what has been debated has largely been the premise of the underlying statute that we are seeking to amend in this bill, which is from House Bill 1353, which we passed in 2024, which requires federally licensed firearm dealers who sell at retail to the public to apply for and obtain a state permit to sell firearms in Colorado. And now the state's firearm dealer division authorizes the state to vet anybody who applies to be a dealer, They allow for random and regular inspections of dealers to ensure compliance and require dealers and employees to undergo training, such as how to identify fraudulent activity and comply with important business standards to ensure firearms are properly protected. The Industry Trade Association recommends all of these things to their members, and in fact, they recommend annual background checks of their employees, and they have partnered with the ATF to produce training programs such as don't lie for the other guy to prevent straw purchases. These requirements are part and parcel of any kind of permit or license to ensure health and safety. We require many different types of entities to pay a licensing fee, to go through inspections, conduct background checks on employees, and take annual trainings to ensure safety. It's done for child care centers, health care facilities, milk processing plants. The list goes on. And while federal agencies recommend annual or more frequent inspections for elevators and restaurants, federal firearms license holders can expect to be inspected at current rates, sometimes less than once per decade. In 2022, the ATF conducted compliance inspections for only 5% of active FFLs. It is clear that the ATF does not adequately oversee the industry due to resource and budget constraints. And that is one critical reason that states have implemented their own licensing standards. Colorado, when we passed that law, joined 15 other states that have a state license or permit. We are now helping ensure compliance with applicable state laws and preventing theft, burglary, straw purchases, and trafficking from licensed gun dealers. Illegal guns don't often start out that way. Nearly every gun in the United States begins as a legal gun purchased by a consumer from a licensed gun dealer. Oftentimes, however, firearms can end up trafficked, used in crime, or in the hands of individuals prohibited from possessing a firearm. And research has found that states with strong dealer permitting requirements experience a rate of in-state gun trafficking 64% lower than states without permitting requirements. That is why we, the General Assembly, passed that bill two years ago. The division has been actively engaging in the compliance work of that law for the last several months since July. But in that process, they have identified a number of gaps to correct for within the regulatory framework. So that is why we are here We are just fixing some of these gaps in record keeping We clarifying definitions And we are also introducing flexible enforcement mechanisms that prioritize collaborative compliance. We have also listened to stakeholder feedback and have offered amendments both in committee and on second reading to address some of the issues that have come up and ensured we are increasing clarity for everyone involved. We amended the section related to the fine structure, which, yes, does mirror what occurs in liquor enforcement. But now it will be lower. That maximum penalty is set as a maximum, not as something that will be applied to mom-and-pop shops, but rather we need to have a threshold high enough that it is not just the cost of doing business for the larger retailers. And that fine structure is also there implemented so that it is a midway point between an FFL being issued a warning and then having their permit suspended or revoked. This is a positive for dealers. Regarding the security provisions, we also amended that in committee to move it to rulemaking so that FFLs have a better opportunity to engage in the stakeholding about how those security measures are set in rule and so that the division can better individualize how each business sets up their security measures to tailor it to the individual conditions, physical conditions of each location. This also is better for the businesses. But those security measures, the department asked for increased security measures in this bill because of what they have seen in the field. That they, after a rash of burglaries, investigated the four locations where the burglaries took place. And of the three that kept their firearms stored off of the floor did not result in any theft of firearms. But the one business that did not secure their firearms in an inaccessible way resulted in the theft of many firearms that are now out there illegally. So we are making small but important changes to the regulatory framework to make sure that we are improving upon the law established already two years ago so that we are keeping Colorado safe and ensuring public safety going forward. I ask for your aye vote.

Mr. Schiebel, please open the machine and members proceed to vote.

Yes.

Mr. Schiebel, please read the title to Senate Bill 4. Senate Bill 4 by Senators Sullivan and Gonzalez, also Representatives Froelich and Wilford, concerning who may petition to court for an extreme risk protection order.

Madam Speaker, I move Senate Bill 4 on third reading and final passage.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Members, I will just echo some of my concerns and the discussions we've been having on these policies the last couple days. And I appreciate the sponsors for giving my caucus the time to make our case as to why we are opposed and our concerns with some of these policies. So I do commend the majority in that aspect. Senate bill 4 I truly believe can be weaponized down the road not not necessarily right now but down the road when there are malfeasance and malintent to abuse and subvert the law and bend the law to manipulate in their favor we have seen this with other policies this law is no different and I think that that sets a precedent and opens the door for a precipice to make sure that there's people who want to commit who want to do harm will will do harm there are unintended consequences and I think this leads to more paperwork and the like and I know we did bring forward an amendment yesterday to stand with domestic violence victims and survivors as well as those of stalking and it was a close vote but I would just like to echo my concerns again that there are people who do not feel safe there are people that have been stripped of their rights to defend themselves given the the abuse and the intent of people who are the instigators that obviously this policies that we have continued to push through this building seem to favor the criminals over the victims. And that is a problem. That is something that I hear from not only my district, from people across Colorado. When we're debating these bills, you know, a lot of people across Colorado say, why are we continuing to push policies that that do nothing to solve crime, that do nothing for public safety, that while there are good intentions for these bills, they do nothing to address the problems we have when we have a state that has become more and more dangerous, when we prioritize criminals over victims. And these victims want to be heard, they want to be seen, they want to be able to defend themselves. And at a time right now when we are one of the most dangerous states in the Union, And we continue to have policies that drive away from that goal that we all want. I know all of us want to have safe communities and a safe Colorado and prioritize public safety. Our visions to get there don't necessarily align. And so speaking for, as you all know, my mother who went through domestic violence, my dad weaponized the law to cure in his favor. And so, you know, my mom was left many times struggling for resources and support because people like him, people like my father were able to bend the law and abuse the law and subvert the law to their advantage. And it would leave people like my mother, who is a domestic violence survivor, to many times defend for herself. And so when it comes to self-defense, I think that that's something that we should all really, really just take into consideration, especially when we go back to our districts and when domestic violence survivors and victims or people who are victims of stalking, when you hear about them, I just hope you hear them out and understand where they're coming from when it comes to self-defense. At the time when we're basically making it harder for law-abiding citizens to arm themselves and protect themselves, and we're basically making it easier for the state to conceal all that power when it comes to weapons, when there's atrocities, people who want to commit atrocities will continue to do so. And so I think ultimately, and the example I will use with extreme risk protection orders is when people want to, you take away the weapon, the firearm, people will find other weapons to do so. They will use knives. They will use cars. They will use bombs. They will use chemical means. Because when people want to commit harm, they will commit harm. And criminals, as some of my colleagues have said time and time and time and time again, criminals do not follow the law. And a perfect example of that is I will share in Charlottesville back in August, an immigrant from Ukraine in a train, Irina Zaruzka. say her name an immigrant who was stabbed to death by a person who had a criminal an extensive criminal history that was not used with a gun it was a brutal stabbing and people who while I understand a fight or flight response in psychology did nothing to prevent it and a firearm was not used Irina Zarutska, a 22-year-old girl from Ukraine who was stabbed and left for dead. And it's very sad to see that a person who had extensive criminal history, even if they had an extreme risk protection order, a firearm was not involved. A person who had extensive criminal history who did that without a firearm. And her parents who are still in mourning for the young immigrant from Ukraine who is now gone. There are other cases like that that we don know about whether they immigrants or citizens there are people who go through this type of stuff time and time again Well I understand the sponsors wanting to make sure that we have extreme risk protection orders in place And while they argue that, well, these are not abused, it's not a matter of if, it's only a matter of when. Because the law is not perfect, it's not designed to completely mitigate the risk 100%. there's only a matter of time until somebody subverts it and abuses the ERPOs to their advantage. And I have concerns because when we also have former President Biden who said that the Second Amendment is not absolute, that is strictly troubling. Because I guarantee you, my colleagues, if the current president said that, a lot of you would be up in arms about that. Now, we have to be consistent because every single amendment is absolute. Whether it's the first, the tenth, the second, or the fifth, they are all absolute. All of us took an oath to defend the U.S. and Colorado constitutions, and with it is the right to bear arms. Now, we are all free to having a firearm or not. That is your prerogative. That is your choice. And I believe in freedom of free will. You can decide what you want to do, honing a firearm or not. But I believe that people who wish to do harm will continue to do harm. And I think that this policy, however well intentioned it is, will only make things worse. and so I have concerns about that from people who have brought it from my district and across Colorado that I cannot in good faith support this now I really would have loved to see the amendment yesterday that my colleague from Douglas brought forward at least to amend it to make it less troubling for me and to my colleagues because there are victims who are concerned about the right to defend themselves and so I strongly encourage a no vote on this bill

Thank you, Madam Chair I am in complete agreeance with my colleague that just spoke especially when he said that other things will be used and are used to commit hurt to commit crime and to hurt others and that's including laws like this this bill will not make others safer we spoke yesterday for hours about those that it would cause even more harm to first we brought up our veterans veterans seeking mental health, veterans seeking mental help. Let me remind you, 22 a day, 22 a day, we lose of our veterans. They do need help. But bills like this, though I'm sure you don't intend to cause the harm, will It will prevent them from actually getting the help that they need I know my veterans I talked to thousands of them and many of them have the same concern, that they will lose their rights, they will lose their God-given rights by the Constitution of the United States. Let me tell you this right now. They will not seek the help that they need, and there will be other types of victims, victims of our veterans, and sadly, unfortunately, maybe even at the hands of our veterans. Because once a veteran needs help, a veteran needs help. They fought and died for this country. They fought and survived for this country. They need to be respected, and this bill does not do that. the Senate sponsor of this bill has been very, very vocal on his opinion of veterans, and it's not a favorable one. And seeing his name on this bill is not surprising. The way this bill is written is going to harm others. The way this is written is not just veterans that will harm. We also brought up amendments to keep the harm away from domestic violence survivors. The way it's written, it can and will cause more DV victims. for them to be further harassed, abused, and victimized. This is a fact. This bill in itself is a weapon. This bill in itself will cause harm. And in my opinion, voting for it will as well. I ask for a no.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Members, I know a lot of my colleagues on this side of the aisle, we come up on these bills one by one in groups. But it's not to punish anybody. It's not to really just waste time. It's because we really think this is important. and we honestly in my opinion i have high hopes that i can maybe maybe convince three four on the other side of the aisle myself to really think about the consequences of bills like these now it's not it's not talking down to the bill sponsors either i'm not doing that their intentions are good uh we all we all agree that we have we must protect our citizens we must be able to protect the people that really need mental help. But the difference where we disagree is the way we go about it. And a lot of this legislation, that's the difference that we have between both of us. It's just the way we go about it. The intentions we can agree on. And my colleagues and I on this side of the aisle, we come up here one by one simply to hopefully help two or three of you understand what we're talking about. Understand that the intentions are there The path we are getting there getting to there is incorrect And it will have dire consequences The consequences I talking about in this bill is that it opens the door for misuse By allowing an institution, under the name of the institution, to accuse somebody that they might do harm to themselves or others is not the way to go about it. The accused have a right to know who his accuser is, his or her accuser is, by name. That way they can positively defend themselves. the expansion of this is not what we should be going about. So, like I said, I'm not talking down to the bill sponsors. Your intentions are great. We can agree with that. It's just the way we're going about it. And I really do hope that a few of you can actually understand my train of thought. And I know we're going to have some more of my colleagues coming up here, and it's not to punish anybody. It's just to help. It's just hopefully we can change your guys' minds for a little bit. So I urge a no vote.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It's an honor to serve with you. It is an honor to serve with you. Colleagues, I wasn't going to speak on any of the bills today. I didn't speak on the one I sponsored. I wasn't going to speak on this one. but I do have to address a comment that was made by a good colleague of ours about rights being absolute and amendments to the Constitution being absolute. I quote Justice Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller, the seminal decision finding a right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. to quote the late justice, like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogs. Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places, such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. he continues, we also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those, quote, in common use at the time, unquote. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of, quote, dangerous and unusual weapons. Colleagues, this podium, this chamber, is protected by the speech and debate clause. This microphone is actually one of the only places in the state of Colorado where you have an absolute right that is protected to say whatever you want. Think about that. You could literally come up here and defame people, and you can get away with it, because we have immunity under the speech and debate clause. That is absolute. Outside this microphone, you do not have that right. You do not have the right to go into a theater and scream fire. You do not have the right to defame people. And just like the First Amendment has its limitations, so too does the Second. And it's important that when we do come to this microphone that we be accurate about that. And that's not me telling you this. That is Justice Scalia himself. Thank you.

Thank you, members. there are three sets of three circumstances that I think about often in support of this bill and I did want to speak because I know we've been sharing stories and I expect that we'll hear some additional stories so when I think about the purpose of this to be clear this is an emergency It happens in the civil space, which means the petition in and of itself is not a permanent taking. And that's really important to denote as to why it's civil. But also it is a petition that has to go in front of a judge. And our judges weigh evidence before they issue the order. And so a lot of ways I think I'm just kind of taken about all of a sudden it seems we've lost confidence in our judges and judicial system, particularly when it comes to discerning whether or not a petition has merit or if it's being done maliciously or for purposes of revenge. for what it's worth if it is found to be done to the latter that is a crime already in statute. And so I know, just in case, for those who are listening, here are the three sets of circumstances in which I personally consider this protection order. Some of us, unfortunately, know what it feels like when a fist crosses your mouth. or hits you in an eye socket or a gut. And usually I would laugh with you. And the thought of knowing that a person who did that to you might also be armed and not being able to say they have demonstrated their intent towards their feelings of me and I don't have a means of not only asking for that separation of space, but thinking about the separation of their weapons, is what this is for. Some of you may also know, and I don't wish it on anyone, what it's like for people to say and follow you and call you, show up at your house and say because of your skin color or your gender that you don belong in a place and that they might come and find you and kill you And the interesting thing about this narrative is when we hear it from other people we recognize it, we want to support them, and we stand for them. I have experienced not only the first scenario I shared with you, but also this one. And to know that people have identified themselves as armed, and they have identified themselves as meaning to cause you harm, and we don't have a tool that is vetted by a judge to help keep ourselves safe bothered me, and that's why I sponsored this same version of this bill three years ago. And lastly, I want to thank my colleague from Jefferson County, because last week, sitting in Judiciary Committee, we heard students, teachers, and parents say to us, support us in getting a warrant so we can look at these profiles of our shooter posting guns and naming that he would like to harm us. And the key question is, even in the event that you or they were able to get that warrant, what would they have done? If a crime was not committed, they couldn't arrest him, but they could question whether or not he might have been a harm. And what would the tool have been to keep him from shooting at his classmates? It is an extreme risk protection order. And so when children, teachers, parents come into this building and say, what would we do if we knew earlier how to prevent the harm? Well, we answered that, and that is what this is. And not only would the teachers probably have spoken up, not only would the neighbors probably have spoken up if they could find it, the school district, and you know how I know that, because they told us in this building when they asked us, what would we do if we knew early, before students were shot? And so given, if we're going to talk about it, the things that we want to protect for, I want us to talk about it in earnest because we're talking about lopsided data. Way more than people who wanted to target folks have applied for this. And when people were alleged to have targeted folks, those orders were denied. Because a judge who has been vetted to know how to sift through information can see that. But for me if anyone remembers that sting across your face I would rather that somebody help me before I feel a sting of a bullet If any of you have heard or felt that sting of being told you are less than and you be followed I'd almost rather feel that than a bullet. But if I don't have a tool, it almost makes me wonder. That means we have to wait for a crime to occur. And I hear everybody in this building saying that that is the thing we want to prevent. And so if we are talking about mental health, guess what? We have civil holds for that. If we're talking about mental health and you know they're armed, guess what? We have holds for that. If we're going to talk about prevention, a temporary civil hold is what is on the table. And so I don't want to ever, I can withstand my own pain. It's in statute. What temporary means. I can withstand my own pain. Despite not growing up in the country, I ain't soft. I can withstand it for even maybe me and my community. But I will not allow myself to have had an opportunity to listen to kids, teachers, and parents ask me what I could have done. and then not vote for something like this. And so for everybody listening and watching, I do want you to understand. We know, despite what people think when we make votes, to do anything in this building as a matter of trauma-informed means to know people's trauma. And so I'm sharing mine with y'all. And that is also a decision for this. But you know, when other people talk about it, I stand for them. Maybe they might do that for me. But what this represents is getting in front of what I know to be harmful through the court of law that we seem to all always ask for when we want to make things crimes. And so to those families, when you ask me, what would we do if we knew? We would ask to hold on to those weapons until we vetted that kid. That's what we would do. And that's what this is for. And that's what this came from. So thank you, anyone who would support it. Unfortunately, pain is universal. But to the extent we can get ahead of it and trust some good people around us, we should try. We should try. Please support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Fellow colleagues, I know this is a controversial bill, and I'm going to try and be as grounded as I can. This bill is not about safety. It is about expanding who has the power to take away a constitutional right. I was born and raised in a third world country. Most very few in this room can say that Third world The privileges every single one of you the majority of representatives in this room have no idea what a third world country is And you can tell me all day that you visited one, but there are very few of us that know what and how important the United States Constitution is and the Bill of Rights stemming from the Magna Carta I will not be preached to I will not be preached to about violating the reason the whole reason myself and my family moved to this country the shoved down my throat government the boot on my neck living in South Africa where three criminals broke into our home, AK-47s to my mother, my father, myself, my brother, and my sister, with the strictest gun control laws in the world. None of you have heard that story in four years, because I haven't told it. Because I try to come down here and represent one district, that actually understands the Constitution and the Second Amendment. I'm all for freedom of speech. I have no problem with that. I will sit. I will listen to you. You can preach at me all day long. But the minute you start chipping away at the whole reason my family had the desire to remove themselves from a country that did not take care of them and a government that kept strangling them with a boot on their neck. It took us 10 years to leave that country. This bill replaces due process with preemptive action. You're expanding government. Let me give you a second phase of my life. I come from Holocaust-surviving family to where the first thing the government did in Germany was take away guns. or give people more authority to rat other people out that had guns. This is a slippery slope, and you are creating it. Four years I've sat here to listen to this nonsense of gun control. When I stood with my Jewish colleague from the other side of the aisle to where a gun saved a whole synagogue of people because there were explosives in a car and it was taken out. Say the other side. Don't make it convenient for you when a gun saves your child or your people in a school. It's convenient when guns are bad. It's convenient... When somebody has to literally rat somebody out, I cannot stand it. We all want to prevent harm. That is not on my radar. And you know that, and you know my heart. We must do it without sacrificing the very rights. We are sworn, sworn. We lift up our hand and we put it on, I put it on a Bible. This bill goes against everything we swear to protect every year we swear in in this building. It is time to reject this anti-Second Amendment nonsense and get back again to what actually matters in the state of Colorado. Our roads are the worst in the Union. Our crime is up. Our businesses are leaving. Why are we wasting our time on nonsense? Get back to what matters to your constituents, regardless of whether they're Republican, Democrat, unaffiliate, Green Party, Libertarian. I don't care. We all share the same problems. We're discussing a 1% problem that affects 1% of you. 99% of this state is angry at the way we're managing it. and they don't know what we're doing in this building. This bill goes too far again with infringing on the rights of the people of this state. Vote no.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. And thank you to my good colleague from Loveland. I was not born in a third world country, but I have been to a number of third world countries fighting for the oppressed people of those third world countries. countries that most of you would never dare to go to. I've been to Yemen. I've been to Somalia. I've been to Mali. I've been to places like that where people are being oppressed every single day because they do not have the same constitutional rights that we have in this country. We hear the words slippery slope often. Well, the slope doesn't seem super slippery when you slowly make it very not steep. When it's just a little bit at a time. It's not as slippery and you can walk down it. But that doesn't change the fact that eventually you'll get to the bottom of that slope where rights have been eroded enough that people can no longer defend themselves and we lose the freedoms that some of us have fought for. That some of us have very good friends that have been killed for. that some of us have had family. No, that's okay. Thank you. I appreciate it and I understand. But it's okay. Some of us have had family for hundreds of years since the foundation of this nation that fought to make sure that we never get to the bottom of that slippery slope. They would stand to do the same thing today. I will stand every single day and fight for the rights of every single person in this country whether they agree with me or not on things But I can do that Other people can do that if they have their rights infringed A mother who doesn't have any other way to protect himself and their children, that has their firearms taken away, they can't protect themselves. We heard we had an amendment yesterday about collecting data. We also heard some numbers yesterday that I seriously question. We don't have good studies for the data for the implications of these orders. We don't. We don't collect the data. We should, because I think that we would learn that they're not doing what some people say they're doing, and I think that we'd learn that they are doing more harm in many cases than what some people would like to say. We should have collected the data. we should also make sure that we're not putting people like my wife who works for a hospital an institution that's an important word for this bill in harm's way because maybe there's some person who has had their firearms taken away because of one of these orders and now they're at a grocery store where my wife is shopping picking up cereal for our four kids and maybe some milk and who knows what else and she's wearing her scrubs that have the the name of the hospital that she works at on and that individual is triggered because he knows or she knows that that's the institution that took his firearms away or her firearms away. And they attack her in the shopping aisle. I used my wife as an example. It could be your wife, your husband, your son, your daughter, anybody else. They become targets because of the institutional part of this bill. This bill will do absolutely nothing. It will do nothing to protect people the way that you say that it does. In security training, in survival training that I've been through multiple times, one of the first questions that gets asked within the first hour of every training thing is, get in teams, make a list of everything in this room that can be used as a weapon. And you do it. And you come up with a list a page long. There's a lot of things. This is not going to protect people the way that you want it to protect people. There's no data that shows that it really does that. In some anecdotal instances, sure, maybe there are some instances. But there are just as many anecdotal instances where it did not protect people or put people in more harm's way because of it. Slippery slope? Yeah, it's not so inclined, so maybe we don't feel it. But the day will come when we continue to pass bills and laws like this that will be at the bottom of that slope. And many of you will recognize that it's things like this bill, the previous bill, the next bill, that it put us at the bottom of that slope where we're in danger. A good colleague from Loveland mentioned a very well-known historical instance of this. millions of people died millions of people died i've been to those places that they were rounded up and put into you they couldn't fight back for themselves i know that we also hear if only one person is saved well how about six million plus people how about we make sure that the 330 plus million people in the United States or the six and a half million people are growing in Colorado were protected Let make sure we do that I can appreciate that we want to protect the one I will always be there to protect everybody I can even the one anytime I can to the laying down of my own life, if necessary, happily done. But these kinds of laws make it so that it's harder for people to do that. I don't understand why we can't understand that these are the wrong things to do. Maybe a shred of nobility in the ideas, but we miss the larger picture. You've got to wake up. We've got to pay attention to what the larger picture is and what the bottom of that not-so-inclined slippery slope is. It's tyranny. It's your families being put at risk. it's your communities being put at risk is that going to happen in 2026 i don't think it's happening in 2026 the way that you would be able to see it happen in other parts of the world in other eras in other times and maybe in our future sometime this law doesn't protect people the way that you say it does it makes people targets it puts people at risk. No is the only smart vote here. Representative Story. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

petitioners to move forward health care facilities behavioral health treatment facilities k-12 schools institutions of higher education and more this bill is about gun safety and gun violence prevention On September 10, 2025, about seven months ago, Evergreen High School experienced a shooting in their school during lunch. It was a 16-year-old student from Evergreen High School with a vintage handgun who tracked through the school, firing off rounds during lunch, aiming and shooting at students, staff, educators, as he tracked through the school, terrorizing students, teachers, and staff. They were running for their lives. They weren't in classrooms. They were scattered throughout the building at lunch, inside and outside of the building. There was a lot of chaos. There were a lot of people targeted. Thirty rounds or so were fired off. Two students became victims. of gunfire with very serious life-altering injuries. Students, teachers, and staff ran for their lives. They ran out of the building. They ran to adjacent houses. They ran across streets to get to other houses in the neighborhood They ran up a steep hill to get to the rec center that adjacent to the high school Many of them were able to find refuge and a place to hide but there were lots of students and staff that were hiding in the building, that were hiding in the locked choir room and hiding in the locked band room, in the offices, you know, sheltering down underneath the glass windows. The student was shooting through the windows from the outside into the band room, where students and staff were hiding, crouched behind spaces. They ran and left backpacks and shoes on the road as they were trying to escape. on Wednesday in committee students and educators and parents shared about their personal experiences from this shooting they talked about the fear, the trauma the PTSD the ongoing physical responses they feel and experience when there's a loud bang, when a book drops to the floor, when a door shuts hard, when a horn goes off, when an EMS first responder siren goes off. All of it creates terror in hundreds and hundreds of people up in the Evergreen and Conifer community. students at Conifer feared calling their parent that's an educator at the school when they knew what was going on because they feared that the phone might go off of their parent and then somebody might know where they're hiding so they didn't do it there's students that share a single team between the two schools for softball, for swim team, and maybe others. It's a single team of two high schools because they can't field a team without both schools working together. And they're friends and like family, like any other high school team. And the kids at Conifer didn't want to call their friends at Evergreen again for fear that their phones might go off. They have loss of appetite, can't sleep at night, afraid to go to school. Some teachers haven't even returned. It's been seven months. They may never go back to school. Another educator, this was her third shooting that she's been a part of or has experienced. the reason this bill is important because it provides other entities to be petitioners to the court to help solve and resolve a situation they believe that could be impactful like what happened at the evergreen high school if this can help stop one more school shooting then it is absolutely worth it. I urge yes vote.

Thank you, Speaker. The representative got up a little bit ago and talked about The absolute of First Amendment, Second Amendment. I totally agree with everything he said. We understand that the First Amendment is not absolute, nor is the Second Amendment. But the Constitution does say the term no infringement, and that's what this is. That's what this continues to be is infringement. That we're infringing on the rights, the constitutional rights of others. And we tried to work through this bill in a lot of different ways to make it so that people are not harmed and those were rejected time after time with this. I want to also tell a little story here because these stories seem to get told regularly up here like there is an ownership of this narrative. I spent five years of my life as a child living in an area where I was beat up regularly day after day and the only reason was because I was white. that's why I was beat up. Add that to the fact that my brother has special needs and it made it worse. And I'm two years younger than him. I was defending him against much bigger people on a regular basis. Over time, you figure some of that out and you learn to return your own pain in the process. And I got fairly decent at that. The sad thing is, is that should never have happened. I do know what it is to have somebody hit you in the face because of your skin color. I've probably been hit in the face because of my skin color more than everybody in this room put together every day. Five years running home at school, caught in the bathrooms at school, everything. Why? Because I'm white and my brother special needs. That part to me is so disgusting, but it also taught me as a younger brother how to defend a bigger brother that was actually bigger than me physically at those times. So to somehow say that, to point toward my side and say, you don't know what this feels like, or you've never felt this, you're completely wrong. As I said, more than everybody in this room combined, I was beat up, chased, attacked, kicked, put in the hospital, had all kinds of things messed up on my body. And the only reason was because I'm white. I've only told that story a couple times in 35 years of ministry. Why? Because I've also let the Holy Spirit help me to deal with this. And I don't let it define me. I don't let it define my future. I don't let it define me right now. I do know what it is at a core level, but I do not let that define me. What defines me is who I am right now. Who I am right now and who I can be in my Savior, Jesus Christ. And so, yeah, I hear the stories. I don't pick on anybody. I know people have been attacked and messed up because of their race or I don't think there's genders. There's only two sexes, no genders, but I don't agree with that. But I understand people get hurt and abused and attacked, but we tried to build things into this bill. We tried through amendments to keep people from being hurt, abused, and attacked, and they were rejected constantly. Every one of them were rejected. So while I do appreciate the stories, I'm not picking on anybody else's stories. You been hit in the face because of your skin color Okay I get that Me about a thousand times But that has nothing to do with what we trying to discuss right now We already tried to fix some of those things in this bill, and they were rejected. So that does fall flat on my ears when we try to use those examples. Because I've been there. I've been there more than anybody in this room, and I understand. But I'm not going to let that define me. And I'm definitely not going to try to take somebody's rights away to defend themselves from that very thing, which we did over and over, knock down the amendments to try to do this. So there's the other side of this, same exact story.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I've been hearing the conversation on this bill, Senate Bill 4. I want to start by thanking the sponsors for bringing this bill forward. But I wanted to make a few comments based on what I've heard earlier. There were colleagues talking about being born or having been to least developed countries. But the United States is not a least developed country. The United States is a high-income country, and it's one of the most developed countries in the world. So we're comparing apples to oranges. First world developed countries varies from least developed countries. And the United States compared to other developed countries 26 times higher, higher than other developed countries when it comes to gun violence. 26 times higher. So we cannot compare the United States to least developed countries, what some of you call third world. We don't use that word anymore. But more importantly, I want to come back to Colorado. On March 22, 2021, I was on Boulder City Council. If you remember, nearly five years ago, we had a mass shooting in Boulder. Ten members of our community were shot and killed while they were doing ordinary things. They were just shopping. They were just leaving, just like you and I. going every day doing all groceries. That should have never happened in a developed country. Yes, worse atrocities happen in least developed countries, but we're talking about the United States of America, a place where we all should feel safe. Also, I wanted to note, I went back and I'm looking at the fiscal note and I was looking at the bill. This is a very nimble bill, a very thoughtful bill. We had the first ERPO process bill back in 2019, and we brought another one in 2023. And this time around, again, we're adding within this bill co-responders and just adding to the category of institutional petitioners. Again, this is a very, very thoughtful bill. This is a bill I believe all of us should get on board with And politics should not keep us from voting yes on this bill because we know how painful how painful it is when our community members get shot and killed by just going to the grocery store. The parents, the family members of these community members were expecting their families back and you know what happened that day? they were not able, these community members were not able to return back to their family members because of that shooting. Because of that shooting. So again, as a representative from Boulder, I'm deeply grateful. Grateful to Representative Froehlich. Grateful to Representative Wilford for bringing this bill forward. Because it gives our community more tools to act before a crisis becomes a tragedy. I have seen tragedies. And I know many of you in this room has as well. And I know some of you, all of us represent different districts. But nonetheless, a shooting in Boulder should. And I know it does impact each and every one of us in this room, not just the people of Boulder. I'm sure you fear going to the grocery store, too, on November 22nd after that mass shooting. Because I was. and we're all human. We know that warning signs often appear first in schools, hospitals, and in mental health settings, and this bill empowers those closest to the situation to step in and seek help when it matters most. In communities like mine, we have seen the devastating consequences when systems are not able to respond quickly enough, and this legislation is about closing those gaps and protecting lives. At its core, this bill is about prevention, about public safety, and about making sure families, neighbors, and community institutions have a meaningful way to keep people safe. I urge you colleagues to please vote yes on this bill. This is such an important bill. I know where I was on November 22nd, 2021. I know how painful that shooting in Boulder was. And for the people of Boulder and the people of Colorado, please vote yes for this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Hey, it's Friday. Let's remember that. So I'll take a deep breath. And that's me saying that. Look at this growth. Look at this growth. If I can do it, you can do it. I rise today in opposition to this bill, but I'm going to come at it from a couple of different angles. I believe, and I think my caucus believes, it expands government, reach deeper into the lives of everyday Coloradans, while placing new burdens on professionals who are already stretched beyond capacity. In 2023, we had a bill that pulled health care workers in school, teachers, administration, into a process that was never meant to be theirs to carry. And I want to talk to you because I come up here as a provider a lot because we seem to be on the chopping block of all the budget crisis that we have. And then you add more regulations on to us while we're treating patients for free, while we're providing care. we are tasked with healing teaching and supporting not policing not investigating and not initiating legal action against the very people that I am meant to serve And now you're going to ask my administration and all of our clinics to do that too. No prior training, nothing subjective, when we're already stretched thin. Rural Colorado, barely operating above the red line. And now we're going to task the administrators of these institutions or these institutions with deciding when to take or file an ERPO. When a patient sits across from a health care provider or a student speaks with a trusted adult at school, I use that term lightly, that relationship must be built on trust. If we turn those trusted professionals into reporters for extreme risk protection orders, we fracture that trust. We did that in 2023, and now we're going to cast an even wider net. People will withhold information. They will. They will stop seeking help, and when that happens, outcomes don't improve. They worsen. And I'll get to data because data is important. We already know that when patients withhold critical information, it can impact the entire body system. I've seen this. I've seen a woman come to me that has not been able to tell me she's a victim of domestic violence, and I can't get her better, and I'm wondering, why can't I get you better? What is going on? Your musculoskeletal system, your nervous system is a mess. Why can't I get you better? That's what you're going to do. Delayed diagnoses, untreated mental health crises, and missed opportunities for early intervention. This bill risks creating exactly that environment. In fact, it just tacks on to 2023. And let's see if the data supports that. We already see warning signs of this type of policy approach, particularly among our veterans. The good representative from El Paso talked about that. Surveys from organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars have found that a significant portion of veterans, nearly one in three, report avoiding or delaying mental health treatment out of concern that seeking help could impact their rights, including firearm ownership. That is the data. those are the statistics that do not lie. That is not a small number. That is a crisis of trust. And for what? We'll talk about how many ERPOs have been filed. At a time when we should be encouraging our veterans to seek care, policies like this risk pushing them further into silence. We're also seeing a breakdown of trust in our education system. According to data from the Colorado Department of Ed, public school enrollment has declined in recent years with tens of thousands of students leaving the system since 2020. Families are making different choices, whether that's homeschooling, private education, or leaving this state altogether. While there are many factors, one thing is clear. When parents feel that their schools are drifting away from their core mission or becoming entangled in broader government enforcement roles, they disengage. The numbers don't lie. This bill risks accelerating that trend by placing school personnel in positions that could fundamentally alter their relationship with students and families. And let's talk about the data on ERPOs. Supporters claim they save lives. But what's the evidence? It's far from conclusive. Studies often rely on projections and assumptions, not clear, measurable outcomes. In Colorado, since the law took effect in 2020, there have been hundreds of ERPO petitions filed each year. Yet statewide suicide rates have not shown a clear or sustained decline attributable to these orders. I think something like 10 percent, they said, well, what about the 90 percent that didn't commit suicide? In many cases, petitions are denied or dismissed, raising serious questions about consistency, standards of evidence, and whether this tool is being applied effectively. take the amendment on data collection. I just heard a bill in Health and Human Services about extreme temperatures. We don't include this building, which I think we could all say that yesterday those were extreme temperatures and we probably should have vacated this building. I think under the Rights Act, I should have been able to go home yesterday. It was well over 80 degrees in this building. So if we're going to take data collection on hundreds of bills in here, why don't you guys want to know what's going on with ERPO? Because it will be the false narrative to this bill because it's not working and it's not happening and we continue to cast wider nets. We are asking professionals to make subjective judgments about future risks, something even trained law enforcement struggles with, while offering them little protection from the consequences of getting it wrong. What is the consequence of me getting it wrong? I've stripped someone's constitutional rights away from them. Now layer on what the bill does to our workforce. Health care providers in Colorado are already facing burnout, staffing shortages, and administrative overload. So what's going to happen to our administrators and our support personnel? Schools are dealing with behavioral challenges, staffing gaps, and safety concerns of their own, and now we're asking both systems to take on legal responsibilities that could expose them to liability and further strain their resources. We just heard from a representative whose wife is a nurse. It creates fear where there should be trust. It creates hesitation where there should be openness, and it inserts government into spaces where relationships matter most. And we'll talk about some more statistics. Health care providers for the state of Colorado have filed six ERPOs. How many have teachers and educators filed? Zero. Zero that they have filed. So let's cast a net. Let's keep casting nets until we get to the number that you guys want in this building. Let's keep expanding ERPO laws until you get what is the satisfying number two. Because yesterday I was told that there have been zero fraudulent ERPO's filed. You rejected my amendment on that, but now we're going to expand ERPO laws for zero filed by teachers. That must be wrong, Brandy. It must be because the teachers are in such shortages. They just don't have time to file the ERPO's. Let's make sure that their administration and anyone under the sun can file it. Zero. Out of nearly 700 ERPO petitions filed in Colorado, six have come from healthcare professionals, no meaningful record of teachers filing them at all. This has never been a tool driven by medical providers or schools. This expansion in bills like this is not responding to existing usage trends. It is preemptively expanding authority into sectors that have barely used the tool and not the primary drivers of the filings. Help law enforcement. Help family members figure it out. Get them the training that they need. Don't put it on the health care workers. Don't put it on the institutions. And don't put it on the schools. Colorado does not track or report a confirmed number of lives saved from ERPOs. Whoa. Whoa. I thought that you were going to tell me at least 100 lives have been saved. You didn't take my amendment because there had been zero. We have no research or data saying that it has saved anyone. We know that 2020 to 2022, 353 ERPO petitions filed statewide. 2023, 168 petitions filed, 125 granted. But we don't know if anyone have been saved by them. Some studies suggest ERPOs may prevent firearm injuries, but this is inferred, not directly measured. Researchers emphasize that lack of documentation and follow data makes it difficult to evaluate real impact But let keep passing laws on people constitutional rights for no data There is no Colorado-specific number like X lives saved. Claims that ERPO saved lives are generally based on modeling, assumptions about risk, or data from other states not confirmed outcomes in Colorado. Huh. Again, didn't take my amendment for the number zero.

Ooh, time flies. The representative from Jefferson County talked about the school shootings, and yes, it is a problem in here, and I have tried to address it. We have slashed school security by the hundreds of millions of dollars, and our children are going to continue to pay the price. And you know what creates terror in me? Walking out of this building late at night, not being able to carry in this building. Walking up my long sidewalk late at night, either working here or fighting for my constituents' rights. You know what calms my fears? The right to keep and bear arms. We do not dictate laws to make people own guns. Stop trampling on the rights of people to own them. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Excuse me. We've got three bills that kind of touch on the same general area today. And we were asked by the representative from Boulder to not make this political. And I don't think it is. but what we're really seeing is a trend that really disturbingly looks like folks are capitalizing on the trauma of others to advance an agenda. And I don't think that's right. You can look at the fiscal note on this bill. It's zero, just like the last one. one that indicates that we're not willing to put any of our state resources in any substantial manner into addressing a problem. And the problem that we should be looking at, and what I think the top line should be, is mental health. but instead of trying to treat the disease instead of putting real resources into mental health we're trying to treat a symptom and we were told this was by another rep that this was about gun safety and about gun violence well if we want to take a subset of mental health that's touching on safety and violence that's fine but we've chosen to make it about gun safety and gun violence. The title itself indicates that this is an expansion. It's an expansion of government. It taps into government resources in order for people to get their way. And as government expands, as government fills the space around us, there is less freedom for people to operate in, and that is wrong. that is not what we should be doing we've been told that this bill is just another step in the right direction and it's a small adjustment it is not I've stood here before on other bills and talked about the fact that generally if you're seeking to do something if you want to create something you know, you've got some options there good fast and cheap and you can only pick two Well we definitely doing it on the cheap because there no fiscal note And this is second change, and since 2019, we're doing things very fast. So it's not cheap. It's fast. So we're leaving out the good in this. There is not much good. It's not a small adjustment. It's not a technical fix. It's not harmless, as it's been said. It's not even helpful. It's another expansion of who gets to ask the state to take away a constitutional right. And I know at this point, several people will just stop listening. And that's fine. That's your right, and it's mine to speak. The bill expands standing to more than community members. It gives institutions power. we're part of an institution and probably in your time in this institution you have seen this institution act to protect itself above serving the people of the state and I'm not calling out our institution specifically that is what institutions do that is their nature it gives institutional power It touches schools, colleges, hospitals, behavioral health facilities, substance use of treatment providers. These are bureaucracies. They're systems. They're administrators. They're not people that have direct responsibility for the folks around them. They are entities. A lot of folks in this room don't like Citizens United because it allows corporations to be looked at as people, and we don't like that. They don't act that way. They don't act like us. These are other institutions. Institutions don't act like families. They don't act like lifelong friends. They don't act like a neighbor who's reaching out with some moral weight on them, trying to make a good decision for someone they love, somebody they're concerned about. These are institutions. They act through policies. They act through lawyers. They act through compliance officers. through risk managers. They act out of fear of liability, and they should because we put liability on folks all the time out of here. But it changes the question that is being asked when confronted with somebody with a significant mental health problem and one that can lead to violence. The question is no longer, is this truly necessary? The institution is going to ask, what protects the institution, and that is dangerous. Because when the government gives a bureaucracy the power to initiate the removal of a constitutional right, overfiling, overuse of this is not some vague theoretical possibility. It is a predictable result. This bill also moves to take sensitive medical and behavioral health information closer to the center of these proceedings that have been put in place. Protected health information may be disclosed for a petition, especially when you're talking about medical institutions. The court could potentially order diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and clinical records in order to make their case or to consider the case. What message does this send? If someone is struggling, should they get help? Should our ranchers and farmers that are under tremendous stress trying to keep something dear to them the land that has been bequeathed to them by generations before them and they going to lose it Should our veterans be asking for help? Of course they should. But bills like this create real fear that asking for help can become the first step in a court filing that strips them of their rights. It's the first step towards the state taking action against them. This is a terrible incentive to give institutions. Every year, the majority tells us the next expansion is going to be modest. We heard this here. We're just adding institutions. so what's the next expansion we'll just step beyond the institution beyond the individual and just have the government directly decide through some sort of minority report type pre-crime look at people's lives what they're purchasing, what they're buying and decide that we need to step in as a government just because it's more efficient than asking an individual to file something from the court every year this circle gets bigger more petitioners, more process, more intrusion and more state power and it's never going to be enough and at the same time our mental health issues continue to grow there's always going to be one more reason the government should trust itself over the citizen we hold the reins of power Of course we're going to trust ourselves more than those that we rule over. Let's talk about my district. In rural communities, institutions carry enormous weight. Our small communities are centered around schools, around their hospitals, around shared treatment providers, co-responder programs. People know each other. Rumors move very fast. Concerns get amplified very fast. and the resources in those areas to defend yourself legally are tremendously thin. Once that process starts, the citizen's already behind. They're always defending. They're already trying to claw back a right that should not have been casually taken in the first place. And I know we've heard that this isn't casual, that there's due process, but that's been an issue from the very beginning that has never been corrected. And again, we're being told that there's going to be some great impact to this. But our fiscal note, again, says there's no cost. The workload is minimal. There's no appropriation.

Thank you. And again, if it's that minimal, why are we doing it? If it's this important, it demands resources and care, not just trying to offload the correction to the problem to some other entity that the government does not fund. We're not going to be safer when more institutions are given more ways to attack people. And rights are not better protected when the state keeps widening the gate and calling it some sort of balance that we're given. This bill is mission creep. It's institutional overreach. and it's just another step away from due process towards some sort of precautionary or precautionary deprivation of people's rights and And at the end of the day, it does not help our ever-growing mental health problem. We're trying to close the barn door after the horses are out. I urge a no vote. We need to do better, but just doing something doesn't mean anything's going to happen. This is a bad bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So there's been a great amount of testimony and commentary on the bill. I find it interesting in this piece of legislation that we want to expand the number of people to reporting in the name of health and safety. There's been questions asked about or statements made. Where were you at on certain events? What happened? How did you fear things? I can remember when Reagan was shot. I can remember 9-11. I can remember Evergreen. I also remember here six years ago when we shut down the state of Colorado along with the majority of the country. And you could drive down the freeways. You can see the marquee signs report if you see a gathering. I remember going out for walks with my son at the time, and people riding past me on their bicycle with a mask on, yelling at me six feet apart. It was my son. At what point do we say we shouldn't be reporting on each other? how much of society is filled with historical examples, Communist China, the Soviet Union, the Khmer Rouge. Pick your country that has reported on its citizens and tells everybody to report or else. And those or else consequences become most often very detrimental, if not lethal. This is being done in the name of safety. All those things were done in the name of safety. Everything that has been passed in those kinds of regimes was done in the name of safety. I would propose to you that maybe we ought to go back to the Bible and kind of pay better attention to being good stewards to our brothers and sisters. I don't think we need the government keeping tabs on us, on our movements, on our purchases, on who we're walking with, on who's in our vehicle. I think we should be taking care of each other. The more that we pass in the name of safety, the more that we pass in this building and justify it in the name to save lives, at some point it becomes very easy to step over the line and say, now I'm going to do this to control you. There's a great number of people that need assistance. There's a great number of people that have mental health issues. Again, I would say we should pay better attention to our brothers and sisters and do what the Bible taught us instead of just reporting everything to the government and figuring out that the government can solve everything or that, quote, an expert can solve everything because the expert knows more than we do. Yes, there are people out there that have a lot of expertise. And can they be a help Absolutely When we ask that authority of the government we go down a road that often leads to a point of no return That is a danger. Ask the people that have lived under that, and they will tell you what it's like. Because they went down these paths. That is not a road that we should be going down. We should be paying better attention to ourselves and not acquiescing our authority to the government to watch our movement and report in on what we're doing and how we're feeling. I urge a no vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker Pro Tem. I think it's important for at least those listening online to have a bit of history on this particular policy. The first time this was brought forward, I believe that was in 2019. And the policy, the underlying policy that has evoked so much emotion and passion today was introduced and debated, and it applied to family members and law enforcement. And at that time, the minority caucus stood in opposition just like they do today, and they argued that law enforcement in many communities would not utilize this tool, that they would stand strongly against the utilization of this tool. after its passage we saw 37 out of 64 counties declare themselves to be some form of a second amendment sanctuary saying that they would not actually allow for this to be done within their jurisdiction or they would not pursue it just as an aside it's interesting that they did that and that this state continues to do that with the federal government and that there is always these power struggles, just as an aside pointing that out. But in any case, in response to these 37 counties pushing back and saying thanks but no thanks, we're not interested, a bill was introduced in 2023. And in that bill, law enforcement was expanded to include employees of the Department of Law. giving the state the authority to enter into these counties who, how dare they, asserted their understanding of constitutional rights. During that particular debate, because it not only expanded the definition of law enforcement, it also expanded the list of petitioners to include educators and mental health providers, you may recall that we had a conversation, I think it was pretty late into the evening if I remember correctly, about the fact that this particular policy would put tension between parents and students on one side and teachers and schools on the other. It would put tension between medical providers and their patients. In fact, if I remember the debate correctly, page 8 of the current bill encapsulates in the liability section part of the compromise that was reached related to that debate because the body decided, hey, let's relieve some of these concerns by saying that if someone doesn't file, they're not liable. Release them from that obligation to file. But we still argued that teachers would hesitate to file ERPOs because they wouldn want to burden that particular relationship And so in some ways, I think that we should title this particular bill, if it were to pass, short title, the We Told You So Act. Because we've told you that law enforcement wouldn't do it, and they didn't. And so the next iteration was, well, we'll have our state law enforcement, who we know will do it because they align with us, have the access. We told you that teachers and doctors would feel uncomfortable doing it, and they do. And so now here we are. We're adding in institutional petitioners. And we're saying that this is going to further drive people out of community. People who have mental health problems, but also people who are just fearful that any time they come into conflict with someone covered by this, they might find themselves on another line of an ARPO. Now, we've been told that it is very rare for ERPOs to be issued when they're not actually valid. We've also been told that the data is not clear. But I do want to point out that the hearing process of this takes place after the initial confiscation. So even during the hearing, if it is resolved that, hey, we're not going to issue this for any further length of time because there is no threat here, that there already has been interaction with the court system. There has already been a violation of privacy. There has already been a harm caused. Now, when we talk about expanding into an institutional petitioner, we did have an amendment yesterday to limit the definition to those institutions specifically named here, and that was not taken. And so this particular bill applies to any entity, any entity that employs or contracts with a licensed healthcare professional or mental health professional, an educator, a co-responder. Which means that at some point, an institutional petitioner could be the General Assembly. because right now we have medical professionals who volunteer their time, but if at any point they become an actual contracted employee, we could find the General Assembly being put in a position where they could file IRPO. It's an interesting thought. Would that be filed against witnesses who come to testify? who are fired up about a particular bill? Would it be filed against another legislator for things that they say at the well? I don't know. What I do know, though, is that the teachers who testified on this, and according to a focus group that the AG's office sponsored, 100% of respondents within the educational space said that they were concerned about filing one of these in their own name. They were fearful. Anonymity was their primary concern They wanted this to be anonymous because they didn want it to impact on their relationships with other people And they preferred the idea that the school district be the one to do it. We heard from a school board member, as I mentioned yesterday, who was concerned about a father responding to the Evergreen shooting. He was at a school board meeting and he was very upset. And her concern related to him was not just his normal anger, but the fact that he was tall. And if you listen to it, she repeated it multiple times, as if someone's physical characteristics are dispositive as to their trustworthiness or ability to be able to possess a firearm. When we expand to these institutional petitioners, give that degree of anonymity, I believe that the hope is that we'll see more of these ERPOs filed. But I also believe that more and more people will distance themselves from institutions. Institutions that may cause risk to them. institutions that already are not trusted by and large in many quarters throughout this state and as the representative from Douglas County pointed out when people distance themselves they can't get the care that they need and so you exacerbate a problem that you are stating you're trying to solve. I also want to point out that the stories that we heard today related to the shootings in Evergreen and in Boulder are deeply grievous. But I don't see the connection between those stories in this bill. The case has not been made that this bill would have resolved those issues. As I understand it, the family of the man in the Boulder shooting did have concerns. And they had the vehicle open to them, but they did not pursue it. In Evergreen, I know nothing that says that teachers were otherwise wanting to file an ERPO and somehow were prohibited from doing it. They would have been given...

Fifty or five? One five.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker Pro Tem. In fact, that shooting happened while we already had the law related to educators being able to file. So what is the nexus? Because the suggestion was we wouldn't have these horrible things happen if this were in place. But the family already knew in the Boulder shooting and they didn't do anything. This was in place. In the Evergreen shooting, this was in place for educators to use it and it wasn't used. Let's try to find solutions that actually work. And hopefully, really quickly, let me just say, there's a study that is used on the government's website that says that for every 10 ERPOs, one suicide is prevented, which, from my reading of what they're saying here, means that nine of those 10 end up killing themselves through other methods. I wouldn't say that's a very successful policy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker Pro Tem. Members, I'm obviously in opposition to this bill for the reasons that all my members I think my colleague from Penrose, I think, really drove it home that about using certain circumstances or certain situations that have happened and then saying, like, what is that nexus? There already was law in place that could have applied, but it didn't happen. And I don't see how going from individuals to institutions actually going to change that. and just as a general thinking out loud here it's just this has become the new norm right it's it's every year we're going to expand it a little bit more and include these people we're next year I guarantee you we will be back we'll have a new list of of different areas and we'll say we're going to expand it a little bit more and then a little bit more I mean honestly just run a bill that says anybody anytime anywhere can do it at this point because it's just going to be a constant thing. I would hate to think that for political reasons, that's why it happens. But I, I just, I know we'll be back here next year having this same exact conversation with just a different list here. And I just will point out, it specifically says the individual district charter school or institute charter school. And as somebody who sits on a charter school, you know, we kind of deal with threats a little bit differently. I don't think you all want to talk about that, but, you know, we send our administrators, uh, to go get trained and we put a big sign on the outside of our school that says our staff are, is armed and, uh, we will protect our children. I mean, that's how we, we, uh, deal with threats at school. Um, and, and we also have a resource officer who is there, uh, during the day on top of it and nobody knows who is armed and when and where. We do that on purpose to mitigate threats. The main issue I have with this is the hospital or health care facilities, behavioral health or substance use disorder treatments. So when this bill went through the Senate, I just happened to be standing outside of the old Supreme Court, and I was on the phone with my wife, and I saw the CSP doors busted open. I heard screaming. My wife was like, what in the world is that? And so I looked over, and the CSP was escorting out a gentleman who had been testifying on this when it went through the sent it and he was screaming. And what I could gather from it as he was escorted out was that he was worried. He goes to one of these behavioral health treatment facilities and he is worried about the potential collateral consequences of he's a military veteran, he needs to go get treatment. He's a gun owner and he's terrified of what this might mean. And he was just screaming, I need help. Like, don't do this and what this will do to veterans. And we heard that. I mean, I don't remember how many people were signed up to testify there, but a huge contingent of them, because I stood outside of the old Supreme Court chamber and I talked to them and I would say probably the large majority percentage wise of them were military veterans who are also gun owners and have concerns about this. And so, you know, I just, I ran an amendment yesterday. It actually had bipartisan support, but not enough. And so that is my concern. And I'm concerned where we will be next year. When we come back there will be another related bill to this issue and expansion and we just expanding expanding expanding every year I seriously just run a bill that says anybody anywhere at any time can do it and just save the taxpayers time save the people who come here and testify either in favor of it or against it sometime here and just run that that one. But for that, I will be a no. And thank you for the discussion.

Members, this is not an easy bill for me to speak on. Thank you. I've spent weeks considering whether I wanted to share my story, but I think that it is something it's not something I've ever spoken about publicly before and it's difficult it's difficult to put myself in a vulnerable situation like this but I believe it's important because this bill is not just a theoretical policy discussion it actually impacts people's lives like mine. As many of you know, I work in the firearms industry, but I wasn't always a firearms enthusiast. Growing up, my parents owned a gun store and a gun range, and my mother was a firearms instructor. I didn't shoot a firearm for the first time until I was 25 years old, and it was with my mom. Tragically, that same week, I witnessed my mom die. That moment has stayed with me ever since. It completely changed how I see the world, how I process things, and ultimately the direction of my life. At the time, I was living in New York City, but after eight years, I moved back home. I'm sorry. I moved back home to be closer to my family and help with our family business. Over time, I followed in my mom's footsteps and became a firearms instructor, which helped me feel closer to her. But for years after her death, I struggled with PTSD. What helped me wasn't policy. It was getting help. It was having access to a trusted mental health provider where I could speak openly, honestly, and without fear. I could tell my story, express my emotions, and work through trauma knowing that what I share would be used to help me not be used against me outside of that room. That trust made all the difference. And this is what concerns me about this bill. If this policy had been in place when I was going through that trauma or if I were to experience something similar like this again, I don't know that I would seek help because I have too much to lose. For over a decade, I've built a career in the firearms industry. For over a decade, I've walked in my mother's footsteps. In those early days after her passing, I gravitated towards firearms. I purchased several firearms and spent time on the range. To some, that might have looked like a red flag. To some even mentioning firearms might have raised concern but for me it was an outlet It was a way to stay connected to my mother Would a mental health institution have issued an extreme risk protection order against me not only because I owned firearms, but because I would have answered yes to the question, in the past two weeks, have you felt down, depressed, or hopeless? Of course I felt those things. I just lost my mother and my best friend. we often talk about the mental health crisis in this country but instead of advancing policies that encourage people to seek help this bill risks doing the opposite mental health care only works when people feel safe enough to be honest it only works when there is trust when individuals believe that asking for help will not be will not result in unintended consequences or legal repercussions members I am deeply concerned that this bill takes us in the wrong direction when I reflect on that time in my life I know how critical it was to have a place where I could speak freely and receive the help that I needed if I had felt the need to filter my words or worry about the consequences of being honest I don't know if I would have sought help, and I don't know that it would have had such a positive outcome because I couldn't be honest. Additionally, how can anyone be sure that someone who works at a mental health facility who has never met the patient will issue an extreme risk protection order? Because like me, they simply check all the boxes. This bill makes it easy for people to take less responsibility and hide behind corporations. This bill dismisses what this country needs most, which is mental health. We should be encouraging people to seek help, not creating new reasons for them to hesitate. For these reasons, I plead for my colleagues to vote no. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I want to start by thanking you all for the stories that you've shared today. being vulnerable, talking about the trauma that you carry as you walk through the doors of this building. I think that trauma is something that all of us have that we carry into this work and into this room, whether it's ours or that of our communities. And I think that we are at our best when we're able to talk about it and when we're able to share stories that really humanize the policy issues that we're discussing today. I really genuinely appreciate it, truly. And it's in that same vein that I want to share a story of my own. at the top of the stairs in my parents house is a frame with all of my dad's bicycle medals and every time I walk by that frame I reminded of one of my childhood friends her name was Catherine We spent a lot of time together after school We swam together. And her stepmom owned a framing business, and she framed my dad's medals. She was also a therapist. and she was regularly treating mental health issues. Many of the same mental health issues that we've discussed in this well today. I'll never forget one day my mom and I were at the grocery store in the bakery and we had a grocery store worker stop and ask us if we had heard about the murder-suicide that had happened the day before. And we hadn't. But what we later learned was that the murder-suicide was Noreen and her patient. Her patient took her life and then took his own. Too often when something terrible happens afterwards, we hear people ask, who knew, who saw it coming, and why didn't anybody do anything? members violence doesn't come from nowhere it leaves evidence statements behavior access to weapons escalation irrever irreparable damage our mental health providers our teachers our co-responders are often closest to a tragedy right before it happens. Not after, not in hindsight, right before it happens. This bill does not create a new system. It does not change the legal standard or legal process. It does not take away somebody's rights. Instead, it interrupts violence before it has a chance to occur. As you heard, the original extreme risk protection order law passed in 2019, and it has allowed law enforcement and family members to petition a judge for an ERPO. The judge doesn't just check a handful of boxes and decide that a temporary order should be issued. There is very clear criteria. There is a pattern of behavior that must be established. The law was updated in 2023 to also let health care professionals, mental health professionals, and educators to submit a petition. And this year, the bill adds institutions like hospitals and schools to the list of petitioners, as well as behavioral health clinicians who correspond with law enforcement. This bill allows a doctor, a therapist, a teacher, or another covered individual to list their employer on the petition instead of their own personal name. This is similar to how a law enforcement agency operates versus an individual officer having to submit a petition. and I believe that if something like this would have been in place, that Noreen would have put the company that she worked for instead of her own name on a petition like this. Once a petition is filed, evidence is presented under oath. A judge makes a decision due process immediately. It's preserved. And if someone files a malicious petition, they can be prosecuted. That is already our law. This bill doesn't change what an extreme risk protection order is. It expands who's allowed to ask for one because doing nothing is also a choice. as a sexual assault survivor i too care about access to mental health and therapy has been something that has been a part of my life every single week in continuing to process what i experienced in the world that i walk as a completely different human afterwards. I care a whole lot about public safety. I do. Please, please sit down. I do. I care a whole lot about public safety. I care a whole lot about saving lives, and this bill, I believe, will foster stronger and safer communities. We heard a lot about statistics and numbers, and so I want to be clear about what the numbers are. According to the Office of gun violence prevention between 2020 and 2024, there were 692 ERPO petitions filed in the state. Judges granted 478 temporary orders and 371 final orders. That, to me, says that the program is working. The process is working. The process is keeping community safe, and people alive. So the question before us members, it's not a complicated one. When someone has credible firsthand knowledge of a serious risk, do we allow them to act or do we do nothing? I ask for your yes vote today.

Thank you very much. Mr. Speaker Pro Tem, Mr. Speaker for today. I want to express my gratitude to the folks who have now had this debate for two days, as often happens when we address this subject. I'm very, very grateful to people who share their personal experiences across the spectrum of those experiences. I come to this work actually from an extreme place of privilege. I walk into room after room of survivors and I ask, how can I help? And I haven't walked in their shoes. And I rely on them for what they feel would have made a difference. If we think of the history of this particular bill, and actually of our whole movement is run by survivors all those folks in red t that come to testify we have someone we have a woman whose sister was a teacher at Sandy Hook She comes every single committee, she carries with her every day the dress her sister wore that day that now looks like a cheese grater. And she shares that trauma over and over and over again because she doesn't want it to happen ever again to somebody else. Our colleague in the Senate, whose child was murdered in the Aurora movie theater, and please sit down because this honors their work to listen to this debate and vote your conscience. So please don't feel like you have to stand. But the murderer at the Aurora Theater, the next day they discovered a manifesto he had delivered to his therapist that outlined exactly his plans. And that's what set our colleague onto the path of running for office and trying to do this work. And he came into this building and he passed the first ERPO in 2019 with our then majority leader. And our people who fuel this movement are parents of kids at Columbine, Arapaho High School. and the tragedy in Colorado is that we don't have to catch a wide net to fill a room with survivors, to fill a room with parents who've buried children from gun violence. And as our colleague from Boulder said, only in America. This is a uniquely American problem. An acceptable sacrifice, said the man our president ordered our flags lowered for earlier this year. It's worth the cost, unfortunately, he said. Some gun deaths so that we can have the Second Amendment. Some? How many? Was it the 2024 deaths from willful, malicious, or accidental guns? That's a little over 19,000. How about injuries? That's 36,000. Mass shootings? Only 659. Mass murder? 40. And the absolute kicker? Murder, suicides. Oh, no. Lost it. Uh-oh. Okay, sorry about that. Sorry, I lost my stats. But the other crazy piece of this is that suicides grossly outnumber all of those other categories And I care about that And if we look at who are highest susceptibility to suicide rural, white men over 50. And I care about that. The other piece of this is that this idea that somehow everything we do doesn't matter, we're finally seeing a decline. Gun violence is down. I'm going to try to find my stats on that that aren't on my phone, so I won't lose them. In Colorado, gun homicide in 2024 was at a high of 61. That's our post-COVID high. Our COVID number was around that at 58. 2025 was 43. Denver experienced six gun homicides in 2025. Colorado, 43. So we're turning the page. It's not enough. and I I just keep trying to figure out why it isn't what is the acceptable number and I hear that not that many ERPOs are pulled and the number doesn't matter and as we've said many times before I just feel like one is enough and it all amplifies. And I know there's fatigue because every one of these bills takes two days. So again, I want to thank my colleagues for listening. I want to honor the folks who fuel our movement. I want to make a difference and you can too. And I'd ask you to vote yes.

Mr. Shebo, please open the machine.

I vote yes.

Yes.

Please close the machine.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move to lay over Senate Bill 43 until Monday, March 23, 2026.

Please.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the robust debate. I know it's been a long day. Happy Friday to everybody. I just want to give a little shout out. We lost Chuck Norris yesterday, and so in lieu of his memory, I wanted to come up here and say a little Chuck Norris joke. So Chuck Norris is so tough that he counted to infinity not only once or twice, but three times. So live on, Chuck Norris memory, live on.

Thank you, colleagues. Just a reminder, Shabbos candles at 1024. See you then.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I've been granted permission by the minority leader and the majority leader to be excused on Monday.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I don't have any historical fun fact for you all, but I do think that there was a lot of emotion in this room today, and I do believe there's a lot of love that flows from that emotion, and I hope you all feel it cross and know that I love and adore all of you. Bye.

Madam Speaker, I move to lay over the balance of the calendar until Monday, March 23rd.

Madam Majority Leader. Madam Speaker, I move that the House stand in recess until later today.